


What's Left Inside

by DarthLuffy



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Fluff, Hizzie - Freeform, Hope finally has to deal with her trauma, Hope's whole family is there too, Hosie, Hurt/Comfort, Not super romantic, The twins finally get to see Hope's trauma, but I do love subtext, mindtrip shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25795351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthLuffy/pseuds/DarthLuffy
Summary: Hope's consciousness ended up trapped inside her own subconscious after being ripped from Josie's mind. Simple enough to fix, all Josie and Lizzie needed to do was go in and pull Hope out. To do that though would require going through the worst parts of her mind, the parts even Hope wanted to avoid. Turns out being told about the things the young Tribrid had been through in no way prepared them for actually seeing it firsthand. Set right after Season 2 Finale.
Relationships: Hope Mikaelson/Josie Saltzman, Hope Mikaelson/Lizzie Saltzman
Comments: 88
Kudos: 347





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** Picks up after season 2. Assume Landon's body is currently shoved in a closet somewhere. This story will really only focus on Hope and the trip through her mind. If I wanted to try to address all the other loose ends after the season 2 finale then I would just end up writing season 3. And I'm too lazy to do that.

**What's Left Inside**

"Why didn't you tell us this sooner?" Lizzie demanded, turning away from the sleeping form of Hope and glaring at her father. It had been nearly a full day since they had got Josie back and he was just now telling them that Hope was in some sort of coma?

Josie was quieter, seemingly in shock as she knelt beside Hope, reaching out and grabbing hold of her hand. "This is all my fault." Josie said quietly, getting her twin to spin back around.

"Umm, no. Hope's the one who decided to play the hero and dive straight into Mordor. She should've made sure she had a safe way out. Instead she apparently decided to hope for a bunch of eagles to randomly swoop in and save her." Lizzie retorted, pacing around the room as she launched into her tirade. With all the stupid, self-sacrificing stunts she had pulled shouldn't she have learned to have an escape plan by now?

"Actually I think this might be our fault..." Alaric said, getting both his daughters to look at him in confusion. "Josie said that Hope had been trapped by the darkness in her mind. And while Josie was defeating the darkness I had you rip it out of her and send it into the Necromancer. From what we've been able to tell that caused Hope's consciousness to rebound back into her own mind."

"What's the problem then? Shouldn't she just wake up?" Lizzie asked, not seeing the problem.

"No, not if she was sent into her own subconscious. She could be trapped there, like how I was." Josie answered, standing up and walking back into their father's office. It made some sense, but she would have thought that Hope would be able to wake herself back up. Maybe she just needed a little help. "If that's the case then we can do the same thing she did, get Kaleb or MG to send one of us in with a hea-"

"No, absolutely not." Alaric cut in, wanting to stop the idea before it even got fully formed. "You girls have no idea how dangerous that could be. We're not doing it."

"Dangerous?" Lizzie scoffed, clearly not seeing the issue. "It's Hope. The most dangerous thing in there will probably be a bunch of emo paintings of bird-boy."

"First off, even ignoring the dangers of Hope's subconscious, it's not that easy for a vampire to send in someone else to do a head-dive. The reason Hope is able to is because of her tribrid nature. A nature which I'm betting will make it impossible for any of our vampires to do so to her." Alaric explained, Lizzie glancing over at Josie to check and see if she believed him. It was hard to say, Hope was unique, which meant that there was an entirely different set of rules for her.

"Well, it's a good thing I brought a couple of Originals with me then." A female voice from the hallway said, a blonde woman who looked to be in her thirties walking in with another dark-haired woman who barely appeared out of college walking behind her.

"Freya, Davina. Could of appreciated more of a warning." Alaric said, turning to face the two witches who had just entered. "Wait did you say couple? As in more than one?"

"Yep. Kol and Rebekah. Along with Marcel obviously. Why don't you go invite them in before we continue?" Davina advised, Alaric looking torn at the very thought of doing so.

"Ugh... fine. Wait here, don't do anything until I get back. And Davina if Kol takes even a step out of line I promise I'll-"

"Encase him in cement and drop him into the ocean?" Davina finished, having heard of Alaric's go to plan for dealing with immortals before. Freya was completely ignoring the byplay and had already moved to Hope's side, checking over her while Davina took care of the niceties. "Relax, he promised he'd be on his best behavior."

"Umm, can someone tell me who the hell you are?" Lizzie snapped finally, wondering who the hell had just barged in and sent her dad off to let in some vampires.

"Lizzie, they're Hope's aunts." Josie explained, having obviously met Freya before and recognizing Davina from the photos.

"That's right, Davina Mikaelson. And that's Freya." Davina explained, gesturing to the blonde witch who was still engrossed in examining Hope.

"Huh, Hope mentioned Freya was married to a woman. Didn't think you'd be so young." Lizzie said, prompting Davina to burst out laughing while Freya just shook her head, a soft smile on her face.

"Oh my god, Lizzie!" Josie hissed, grabbing her sister by the arm. "They're not married. Freya is Hope's biological aunt and is married to Keelin. Davina is married to Hope's uncle Kol."

"Well excuse me for not having studied Hope's family tree." Lizzie countered, at least now understanding why the two witches were here.

"We've literally covered Hope's family tree in three different classes." The Mikaelson's were pretty integral to the supernatural world, and had been covered extensively in class. Much to Hope's chagrin typically, the tribrid always finding a way to be absent those days.

"Oh, and I'm thirty-five if that helps." Davina threw in, rather amused by the twins in front of her. The way Hope had tended to describe them left a far different image than what she saw now.

"Wow, really? Can I get you're skin care regiment then?" Lizzie asked, looking over Davina with an appraising eye. The witch looked like she could be enrolling here as a student.

"You should get Freya's, she's the one that's over a thousand." Davina replied, Freya finally standing up and stepping back into the office.

"I'm fairly certain it doesn't count when you spent most of that time asleep." Freya said, shaking her head in protest. She for one didn't want to count herself as being that old.

"Oh, yes it does."Rebekah said, vamping into the room in blur of blond hair, Marcel and Kol entering along with her. "Because otherwise I have to be the responsible older sibling and that isn't happening."

"Yes, yes. Let's stand around and gossip about our age while my favorite niece is in a coma." Kol said, giving Davina a quick kiss to her temple before vamping to Hope's side, looking the girl over for himself.

"Someone mind doing introductions? Or are we skipping that?" Marcel asked, gesturing to the two teens who seemed stunned by their sudden entrance.

"Right. These are Alaric's daughters, Josie and Lizzie." Freya said, pointing to each of the girls, Lizzie giving an awkward little wave as she did. "Girls, this is Marcel, Kol, and Rebekah."

"Oh, the Gemini twins. Siphoners too right? The ones that helped save Hope." Kol realized, looking over the two with an appraising gaze. "That might be useful."

"I thought so as well." Freya said, starting to go over what she'd learned from her examination. She was cut off before she could start though as a panting, red-faced Alaric ran into the room.

"Goddammit. Times like this make me miss being a vampire." The only human in the room groaned, before realizing what he had said.

"You used to be a vampire?" Lizzie asked loudly, wondering how the hell that had never come up before.

"It was a long time ago. And it's a long story that's better left for another time. For now let's figure out how to help Hope." Alaric said, diverting attention away from his rather complicated past and onto the problem at hand. That was the whole reason he'd been willing to bring the entire Mikaelson family to the school, to find a way to help Hope. "Any ideas?"

"A few. Best I can tell Hope's conscious mind has been trapped inside her own subconscious. So what we need to do is guide her mind out of there and back into control." Freya said, before nodding her head at Marcel. "Care to try first?"

"Why not? Let's see if a good ole fashioned head-dive is enough to wake her up." Marcel replied, moving over to Hope in a blur of speed before kneeling beside her. Concentrating he placed one hand on Hope's forehead as he tried to send his own consciousness into Hope's. For nearly a minute everyone was quiet, waiting, hoping, that Marcel would succeed.

"Damn, nothing." Marcel said finally, removing his hand and shaking his head. He could feel her in there but he couldn't get through, it was like she was blocking him. Whether or not that was intentional he didn't know but for everyone's sake he hoped it wasn't.

"Are you sure you did it right?" Kol commented, more out of frustration than any real doubt.

"Be my guest," Marcel said, gesturing over to Hope. "This isn't like when Klaus pulled Hayley's location out of her. She was a lot younger, not as powerful, and hadn't awakened her werewolf side back then. I doubt even he could manage it now."

"Yes well, let's all be glad he's not here to try." Kol said under his breath, not missing his murderous older brother at all. If Klaus had been here he'd have likely slaughtered everyone in the school for letting this happen to his daughter.

"Enough." Freya said sharply, cutting across the family bickering. "If we can't do this the easy way then we'll go with plan B."

"What's plan B? And is there a plan C and D as well or are you just making this up as you go along?" Lizzie asked, not letting the collection of extremely powerful and dangerous supernaturals dissuade her from her usual snark.

"Both. Plan B is to create a _Chambre de Chais_ and place Hope's consciousness into it. With any luck that will be enough to allow her to find the exit on her own." Freya said, already pulling the supplies they'd need out of the bag she'd brought. "Plan C is to send someone in to guide her out in the event that she can't do so on her own."

"Huh, multiple plans... that's new." Lizzie said, more surprised that she should be. Then again Hope had done something similar when going against Josie's goth-reject alter ego, so maybe she had learned from Freya.

Freya and Davina ignored her as they got to work drawing the circle for the spell. This was going to be more complicated than a normal _Chambre de Chais_ would be, as Hope was already trapped in her own head. For it to work they would have to create the spell in a way that would allow it to construct it's own world from Hope's subconscious. Only then could she actually find a way to leave it.

* * *

"So, Plan C then?" Lizzie said, breaking the silence that had set over the room for the last hour or so. Freya and Davina had cast their spell and they had all just been waiting, hoping that Hope would wake up. Which quite clearly hadn't happened.

Freya let out a sigh, having hoped it wouldn't be necessary. There was no reason for Hope not to have woken up as far as she could tell. "Plan C then. We send someone in to pull her out."

"I'll go." Pretty much everyone in the room said at once, all looking at each other with a mix of amusement and surprise. The only two that hadn't volunteered were Freya and Davina, who were needed to oversee the spell on the outside and thus couldn't.

"Ok, you can't all go." Freya said, shaking her head slightly even as she smiled. She knew that every member of their family was willing to do so but it was good to see that Hope had people here that were willing to as well.

"Then it should be me." Josie said, speaking up immediately. As everyone's attention turned to her she reflexively started to retreat but then forced herself to stand her ground. "This is my fault. Hope is in this state because she wanted to help me. So I should... no I need to do the same for her."

"Then I'm going too." Lizzie said, leaping to her feet to stand by her sister. If Josie was going then she was as well. Besides this might be just as much her fault as it was Josie's if their Dad's hunch had been right.

"You don't need to do that." Josie said, not seeing a point to send them both.

"Why? Hoping for some more fairy-tale role play?" Lizzie retorted, getting Josie to blush and gasp in embarrassment. Josie had filled her in on everything that had happened inside her mind and she had no intention of letting such good material go to waste.

"Do either of you know what you're getting into?" Freya asked. As amused as she was by the byplay she wanted to make sure they knew what to expect.

"It's Hope," Lizzie said with a shrug. "Unique, short, and with a martyr complex the size of Texas."

Marcel laughed at that, finding the description of his little sister to be quite accurate. "All true but have you thought about why that's the case?"

"Didn't eat enough vegetables as a kid?" Lizzie said, only to roll her eyes at the looks she got in return. "Look I get it. Hope's had a tough life and has enough damage to fuel a dozen angsty novels. And that's why I'm going, to cut through her bullshit and make her wake her ass up. And if that fails then I'll have Josie pout at her until she gives in."

"Hey," Josie protested with a pout. Realizing what she was doing upon seeing her sister's all to gleeful smirk she did her best to twist her face back into a neutral expression. "And while Lizzie said it in the worst way possible she has a point. We know Hope, she's our friend and we've spent the last year getting to know her better. We should be the ones to go."

The room was quiet for a moment at that, before Rebekah spoke up. "I say we let them try. If it doesn't work then Marcel and myself will go. But let's let her friends try." Four years ago Hope hadn't had any friends her age and Hope and the Saltzman twins had practically hated each other. But now that had changed, and she felt they should at least give the twins a chance.

Freya looked around to see if anyone disagreed. Kol didn't seem too thrilled but wasn't protesting and she got a nod of approval from Marcel. Alaric seemed the most worried but wasn't saying anything, probably due to a combination of wanting to protect his girls and wanting to allow them to make their own decisions. Well if there were no protests then, "Very well, the two of you can try first. Bring her back to us."

* * *

"Huh, after all the dire warnings I was expecting something more ominous." Lizzie said to Josie as the two of them suddenly found themselves on a street in what had to be New Orleans. Instead of a dungeon or an army of monsters or fairy-tale land it was just an ordinary empty city street, with the faint sound of what she assumed was jazz in the background.

"I think this is outside of Hope's home." Josie said, looking around to get her bearings before focusing on the entrance way to a large compound.

Lizzie opened her mouth to ask how she could know that, only to see her sister pointing at the Mikaelson crest above the doorway. Fair enough. "This might be a shorter trip than I thought then." Lizzie said, striding right up to the doors and shoving them open. "Hope! The sleeping beauty bit is played out already. So get your ass out here and wake up!"

"Lizzie!" Josie hissed, not sure if it was really a good idea to just be shouting for Hope like that. It certainly hadn't been in her own subconscious. "And Sleeping Beauty is a classic," Josie defended, feeling a tad insulted.

"It's a pathetic fairy tale that teaches young girls that they have no power or agency and should just wait for some nameless perfect prince to come along and fix everything." Lizzie retorted, not even bothering to turn around as she continued into the compound. "Holy shit, there's an actual courtyard."

Following her sister inside despite her hesitation, Josie stopped and looked around at the scenery as well. Neither of them had ever been to Hope's home, had never even heard her speak of it really, and whatever they had been expecting it wasn't this. The courtyard alone was gorgeous, the stairways and railings that surrounded it covered in garland and soft white lights that were reflected by the fountain at the center. The walls around it were decorated with artwork every few feet, mostly paintings but a handful of sculptures as well. For a moment neither twin spoke, instead just taking in everything in front of them.

"This is..." Josie started before stopping as she noticed something else. "Do you smell food?"

Taking a sniff of the air herself Lizzie nodded, "It smells like... turkey?" Had Hope refused to wake up just to indulge in some calorie free gourmet meals? Cause if so she was never going to let her hear the end of it.

Not having a better idea the twins followed the smell, slowing as they could hear the low murmur of voices as they got closer. Glancing at each other they shrugged, they had come this far after all so it wasn't like they were going to stop now. Rounding the corner they were surprised to find a large group of people seemingly enjoying Christmas dinner, with Hope right at the center of them.

"Hope..." Lizzie started to say before the words died in her throat. This wasn't the Hope they knew, but a younger version, her hair up in that dumb braid she used to always have. There were a few people she didn't recognize, and most of the others she only knew for having met them a few hours ago, but the two seated to either side of Hope she did know. She had only met the man once but given the circumstances of that night and who he was it was impossible not to recognize Klaus Mikaelson, Hope's father. And on Hope's other side was someone she had met a handful of times, Hope's mother, Hayley.

"Is this a memory or...?" Lizzie asked her twin. After all out the two of them Josie certainly had more experience.

"No, it's a dream." A voice said from behind them, getting both of the twins to jump and turn to look behind them. Hope was just standing there, looking just as they had seen her in the real world, a soft smile on her face as she looked at the dinner before her.

"Hope," Josie breathed out, relieved to have found the girl so quickly. She started to move toward her before stopping as she noticed that Hope's gaze had never left the dinner playing out behind them. She had never really understood the phrase 'a sad smile' before but now, seeing the contrast between the smile on Hope's face and the sorrow in her eyes, she did. It looked as if she would break at any moment and just looking at her was starting to bring tears to Josie's eyes.

As Hope stepped forward the two twins parted slightly to let her do whatever she felt she needed to, able to feel instinctively that this was something she needed. "You ever have one of those dreams where you can tell it isn't real but you don't want it end? That's what this is, a dream that never happened, that will never happen."

Josie and Lizzie glanced over at each other at that, not knowing what to say. They had been expecting to find Hope trapped or unconscious or something, not having ever thought that she might have chosen to remain inside her subconscious. "I miss you both so much," Hope said, tears welling up in her eyes as she spoke to image of her parents. "But I have to wake up now."

With a wave of the tribrid's hand the scene in front of them dissolved away, leaving the three girls standing there alone. To Josie's surprise it was Lizzie that moved first, her twin stepping forward and wrapping her arms around Hope in a hug that seemed to surprise the girl. Following suite herself Josie hugged on to Hope from the other side, the tribrid just standing there for a moment before she finally moved to wrap her arms around the two girls herself, holding them close to her as tears fell to the ground silently.

* * *

Several minutes later the three girls were back in the courtyard, Josie sitting along the edge of the fountain with Lizzie standing a few feet away as they awkwardly looked at Hope, none of the three really knowing how to begin. "Kind of an interesting subconscious you have here," Josie said finally, paraphrasing what Hope had said to her in her own mind previously.

Hope smiled at that, giving a soft laugh before answering, "Fortunately we're not in my subconscious." Looking around she nodded in appreciation of how well constructed the world was, she knew first hand how difficult it was to construct a _Chambre de Chais_. Actually, now that she thought of it, there was no way that the twins had managed to do this themselves. They would've needed someone to siphon the magic from to begin with. "This is really well made, who helped you?"

"Your family, Dad called them as soon as you didn't wake up. They were all here in less than a day." Josie said, a slight frown on her face as she thought about that. All it had taken was a single call to have the entire Mikaelson at their doorstep. So why had Hope never done so before?

Hope merely nodded along at that, not noticing Josie's frown before tilting her head slightly as something occurred to her. "When you saw I didn't wake up... how long are we talking?" Hope asked, suddenly worried about it. As she had been stuck in her own subconscious it wasn't as if she could really tell how much time had passed, for all she knew it had been months. Or it could have been a few hours, no way for her to tell.

"You've been imitating Snow White for about two days now." Lizzie answered, glaring at Hope slightly. "Also last time I leave the planning to you. First you nearly get yourself impaled, then I died, and then you got yourself locked in your own head."

"It worked, didn't it?" Hope rightly pointed out. Aside from getting locked inside her own head she thought that her plan had gone perfectly.

"Hope I'm..." Josie started to say, her voice much more somber than the light tones Lizzie and Hope had been using. "I'm so sorry, this was all my fault and..."

"Jo, no. You can't blame yourself," Hope said, moving to sit on the edge of the fountain beside Josie.

"Can't I? I let the darkness in, let it take control. I didn't even try to fight until you came to persuade me." Josie said, staring a hole in the ground in front of her and refusing to look at either Hope or Lizzie. "I killed Alyssa, tried to merge with Lizzie, and nearly killed you."

"Oh get over it," Lizzie said, not feeling in the mood for another heart to heart with her twin over this. Josie and herself had already had a long talk about all of this while Hope had been off in dreamland and she thought Josie had at least got past this. "One, Alyssa is a bitch and, you know, not actually dead anymore. Thanks to me I might add."

Hope turned to look at Lizzie curiously at that, being able to infer that Alyssa must have been freed of the Necromancer's control somehow and wondering how the hell Lizzie had managed that. "Two, it was Hot Topic Josie that tried to merge, not you." Lizzie continued, getting into a groove as she went on. "And three, I swooped in and saved Hope from ruining her stupid plan by getting herself killed first."

"Oh please, I wasn't in any danger of actually dying." Hope said, getting both twins to look over at her in disbelief. They had both been there after all, and after taking back control Josie had gotten the memories of all of her darker alter ego's actions. Hope had seemed pretty close to dying to them. "Fine, three points was it? One, I could have stopped my fall myself if I had wanted."

"Two, that wouldn't have been enough to kill me, I would've been able to get up and heal in less than a minute." Sure it would likely have hurt like a bitch but simply being run through wasn't enough to kill her, she could heal from anything except an instantly fatal injury in a matter of minutes. "And three, even if it somehow had killed me, I would've just come back as a vampire." And ripped the Necromancer from limb to limb.

"That's... huh," Lizzie said, thinking on the points Hope had made. They weren't as bullshit as she thought they'd be, although there was something she said that bothered her.

"What do you mean 'if you had wanted'?" Josie asked, beating Lizzie to the question. They could see Hope actually wince as she asked, having apparently not meant to say that part. "Hope, you weren't going to actually let me kill you to in some stupid attempt to reach through to me, were you?" She couldn't have possibly been that reckless.

"I was getting through to you," Hope defended, suddenly wishing she had been less honest in her previous answer. "You had started to fight back, and if you thought that you had actually killed me then maybe it would have given you the extra push to take back control."

Neither twin said anything at that, both just staring at Hope with their mouths open in shock. How could Hope possibly think that was okay? How could she think that either one of them would be okay with her sacrificing herself like that? Hadn't she learned anything from the last time she had? "You're an idiot." Both twins said simultaneously, before really letting loose.

"How could you possibly-"

"What were you thinking-"

Josie and Lizzie stopped for a moment, glancing at each other as they stopped trying to yell over each other. Getting a nod from her twin Lizzie launched herself back into it, "Have you lost your mind? What is it with you and the self-sacrificing? Did you not learn anything from the last time?"

Hope averted her gaze at that, not having really thought of it. Before she could even try to make a justification though Josie jumped in. "How could you have even thought that sacrificing yourself would help? Hope if you had died... if I had actually killed you... I-I would have broken. There would have been no coming back from that. You and Lizzie are two of the most important people in my life, if I had lost you both..."

Josie fell silent at that, not wanting to finish the thought. She would have broken completely if that had happened. She had been lucky to not be aware enough to know that her darker self had tried to merge with Lizzie, because if she had thought that she had successfully done so then there might not have been anything left for Hope to save by the time she reached her.

"I didn't..." Hope started, before pausing as she tried to think of what to say. She didn't what? Think that they would care so much? Think that seeing her die, or even severely hurt, would be that painful for them? She knew the Saltzmans cared for her but sometimes she forgot that it was real. That the girls she had barely spoken to for years had become such an indispensable part of her life in such a short period of time. She forgot that there were people, outside of her family or Landon, that loved her.

"I'm sorry. I didn't think it mattered what happened to me, as long as I could get through to you." Hope said, her eyes flicking up for a moment to meet Josie's before staring at the floor once more. She was fine being the one hurt, she could take it. What she forgot was that there were other ways to hurt someone, and that for the twins one of those was through her.

"Seriously, is this like a fetish or something for you? Do you actually get off on the idea of dying for everyone else's sake?" Lizzie said, Hope and Josie both turning to her in shock, their faces both dyed red in embarrassment at what she'd said. "Umm, hello? Not a rhetorical question. I'm legitimately asking here."

"Why did Freya think it was a good idea to send you into my mind again?" Hope asked sarcastically, even as a small smile played across her face. It actually meant a great deal to her that both Josie and Lizzie had been willing to come and help her, even if it hadn't been strictly necessary. Simply constructing the _Chambre de Chais_ had been enough to break her mind free of her own subconscious and she would've been able to find the way out on her own. In fact depending on how the exit had been created it might have been better if she was alone.

"Whatever, you know you love me." Lizzie retorted, getting an eye roll in response. Well at least the mood was better now, there was only so much emo she could take. "So how do we get out of here, your aunt said something about needing to find some kind of totem?"

"In normal circumstances yes. A _Chambre de Chais_ is typically a prison, one that uses representational magic to bind it's target. This one though was constructed from my own subconscious, so I should have some control over it." Hope said, giving the twins a simplified explanation before focusing, with any luck they would be able to leave rather easily. Of course luck had never really been in her favor. "...fuck."

"I take it that isn't what you were hoping for?" Josie asked, looking at the door that had suddenly appeared along one of the walls. It was a large wooden double door almost concealed under a truly absurd amount of chains, held in place by four large padlocks. Even as she looked four more doors appeared, two to either side of the main door, each one smaller and plainer than the main one. And without the chains.

"I was afraid of that. This place was created by my subconscious, and because I didn't really want to leave..." Hope sighed as she trailed off. She had known this would happen. Of course her own mind would make things as difficult as possible for her. And knowing her own mind she could guess that the keys to leave were going to be in parts of her mind she'd rather not visit.

"You said that before. Do you really want to stay here? Trapped in your own head?" Lizzie asked, not sure how Hope could think that. Her own mind was pretty much the last place she'd ever want to stay.

"Not really. But as I said, it's like a dream. You know you have to get up but in that moment before your truly wake you feel like you'd rather stay forever." Hope said with a shrug. She wasn't really bothered by it, she knew why her subconscious had reacted how it had but she also knew that if she had been fully conscious that she would have chosen different.

"Each of these doors should have a key behind it, all I need to do is go and get them." Hope said, striding over to the doors. It wasn't like she had anything to fear, all of this was made from her own mind, there wasn't anything here that could hurt her or her friends unless she allowed it. Picking one at random she reached out to open it, only to jerk away from it a second later, eyes wide in horror.

"Hope!" Both twins yelled, rushing over to her as they saw her recoil away from the door. Hope had pulled in on herself, looking at the door in front of her with something they had never seen the young tribrid really show before. Fear.

"I'm going to kick my own ass once I'm out of here," Hope muttered under her breath. She was angry with herself for making this so difficult and she latched on to that anger and held on to it, using it to drive away the fear and horror she'd felt upon realizing what lay behind the door.

"What's so bad about a door?" Lizzie said, moving away from Hope and stepping closer to it. Before Hope could even think to stop her Lizzie reached out and touched it, her eyes going wide as she leapt away from the door, almost falling down in her rush to get away.

"What was that?" Lizzie got out, almost falling before Josie caught her, having moved from Hope's side as soon as she saw her twin recoil from the door. She had been able to feel part of what Lizzie had through their bond, and even as she helped steady her sister she could still hear the screams echoing in her head.

"Remember what I said about not wanting to wake up? Well it appears my subconscious put the keys to leave inside of memories I would never want to revisit." Which was just amazing. She knew which memory was behind that door, and it was the last one she had ever wished to see again. And while she couldn't be entirely certain, if the other doors were the same then she had pretty good guesses as to where they would lead as well.

"Look you don't need to stay here, I can handle this. There should be a totem that represents each of you in this room, if you find it you can leave without needing to go through the main exit." Hope said suddenly, trying to get the twins to leave. There was no need for them to stay and go through this with her. It wouldn't be right to make the live through her own personal traumas.

"No way, we're going with you." Lizzie replied instantly, steadying herself and moving closer to Hope. "There is no way in hell I'm leaving you to face whatever that was alone."

"Lizzie's right, we're not leaving. So don't even think of trying to send us away. Let us help you through this, like your always helping us." Josie said, moving to Hope and taking her hand as she spoke. "You don't have to do this alone."

"You don't realize what you're getting into." Hope said, trying to keep the tears she could feel building from falling. It meant so much to her that they were willing to stay but they had no idea what they were walking into to. No one at the school did. Even Alaric only knew a broad idea, he wasn't aware of all the details.

"Those screams you heard? They weren't mine, they were my Mom's. From when was tortured in front of me for hours, and then she sacrificed herself to save me." Hope said, her voice breaking as tears started to fall.

Josie and Lizzie didn't know what to do at, they had known that Hayley had been killed of course but hadn't known that Hope had been there when it had happened. They didn't know that she had to see her mother tortured in front of her. And know to escape her own mind she was going to have to relive that? To see it happen all over again? And that was just one of the doors as well, they had no idea what could be behind.

Glancing at each other to make sure they were on the same page, the twins stepped forward and wrapped Hope in their arms again, letting the shorter girl cry into them. They weren't going to leave her to do this alone, no way in hell. "We're staying. And if you somehow kick us out then we'll just get Freya to send us back in, we're not letting you do this alone.

Pulling away from the twins Hope wiped at her eyes, trying to dry them. She hadn't cried this much in years, and even though she knew Lizzie and Josie would never judge her for it she hated doing so in front of them. They hadn't even done the hard part yet and she already felt like she was on the verge of collapsing. "Ok, but I'm leaving that door for last."

Picking a different door she placed her hand on it, wincing slightly as she heard the yelling from behind it. She knew what lay behind this door as well, and it was a memory that she had assumed would be behind one of the doors. She really didn't want Lizzie or Josie to see what was behind it but they had made it rather clear that they weren't going to leave her. She just hoped they still felt the same after seeing what lay behind it, after seeing just how much of a monster she really was.

* * *

**Author's Note:** And that's chapter one. This will be either two or three chapters, depends how long the next one ends up being. Not sure how shippy I'll get either but since the focus is literally on Lizzie and Josie seeing the worst moments of Hope's life it's not like there will be a shortage of material. The main thing though will be having the twins learn just what Hope's been through in her life, and maybe helping her process it better than she has. So let me know what you think, and if there's anything interesting that you think should come up. What's behind three of the doors is set in stone but the fourth is still in flux and I might change it still. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note** : So I had a full week off with plenty of time to write. And then I of course didn't. Instead I waited until I was back working 12 hour shifts and having to write at midnight. Make better choices than I do kids. Anyways here's chapter two, featuring Hope, Josie, Lizzie, and whole bunch of dead people. 

**What's Left Inside**

Hope had been pretty sure what to expect once she had opened the door, she recognized the screams after all. Pretty hard to forget when she was the cause of them. But she had been expecting to show up outside the church, to have a moment to warn Lizzie and Josie about what to expect. Not dropped right into the center of the church with dozens of dead vampires scattered around them.

"What the hell happened here/Who are all of these people?" Lizzie and Josie asked almost simultaneously, Hope staying deliberately turned away from them as she thought about what to say. The twins were no strangers to violence of course but they had never seen a massacre like this. Not in person at least.

"They were the last of the Nightwalkers, basically knockoff-Nazi vampires. They're the ones who killed my mom." Hope said finally, answering Josie's question first. It was the easier one, and hopefully would help them understand the answer to the one Lizzie had asked.

"I thought Roman..." Lizzie started, before trailing off as she realized that was probably a bad idea. She broadly knew that Roman had been involved in Hayley's death, but the particulars were a bit spotty. And obviously she had never brought it up with Hope.

Hope gave them that empty smile she used whenever she was trying to hide how she really felt, it wasn't something Lizzie had missed seeing. "His mother was their leader. They killed Henry, and my Mom, and a lot of others. All because they were scared of me, of the fact that I could create hybrids."

"I didn't... I'm sorry." Lizzie got out, not sure what to say. She had never really thought about the fact that people wanted to kill Hope just for existing. She had always liked to think that Hope was just being dramatic with her emo routine over being unique. She hadn't realized that there were real reasons behind it.

"Hope..." Josie started, wanting to move to her side before realizing that she'd have to pick her way through the bodies littering the floor.

Seeing Josie look down at the floor, Hope sighed, there wasn't really a point hiding what had happened, they'd probably figured it out already. "You asked what happened here? They were lured here, for me. So that I could kill them all."

As she finished speaking an odd distortion went through the space around them, like a ripple spreading through the air. All around them ghost like apparitions appeared, transparent copies of the bodies that littered the floor, all with their attention focused on something near the entrance. Turning they could see equally spectral apparitions of a younger Hope, with Klaus and Marcel flanking her.

_"I'm going to enjoy this." Marcel said, a dark look on his face as he stood by Hope, taking in all the vampires arranged before them. Just lambs for the slaughter, and they were the wolves come to feed._

_"Go on sweetheart, let it all out." Klaus said as he walked up behind Hope, seeming almost eager at what was about to happen._

_As Hope took a step forward they could feel the room shift, feel the sudden jolt of concern that went through all the vampires gathered before her. And then her eyes turned blue and that concern turned to panic, the mass of vampires collectively flinching from her. They could understand why, as even from just a memory they could feel the power coming from Hope. And then she screamed, waves of raw magic pouring from her hands, and when Hope stopped there was nothing left alive in front of her._

Hope kept her face as neutral as possible as the ghostly scene faded, returning them to the church full of corpses. She hadn't been expecting the reenactment but it did mean she didn't have to explain as much. "Well, that was something." Hope muttered, not really thinking about it. She really hoped that wasn't going to be a theme, there were more than a few memories she'd rather not have played out in front of her.

Knowing she had to face the music she turned back to the twins, dreading what she would see. It would only be natural to fear her after that. Lizzie looked shocked, just staring at her with her mouth open slightly, not saying anything for once. And Josie was actually shaking, both her arms wrapped around herself. "Jo?" Hope said softly, stepping over the bodies to move closer to her.

As Hope reached out to place a hand on her shoulder Josie jumped, almost as if she'd been shocked, and as her eyes met Hope's she saw the pain that action caused lance through them. "Hope!" Josie said, taking a step forward and grabbing Hope's hand as she tried to pull away. "It's not what you think."

"Really? Because it looks like you're terrified of me." Hope retorted, wanting to rip her hand out of Josie's and run.

"It's not... I'm not. I couldn't be afraid of you." Josie said, tightening her grip on Hope's hand to keep her from pulling away. That wasn't exactly the truth of course, there was a part of her that was scared of what Hope had done. How could there not be? But she wasn't afraid of Hope.

"It was the magic, right? You could feel it too." Lizzie said as she picked her way through the bodies to move closer to them. They had been able to feel the magic that Hope had used, a piece of it at least, and it was terrifying. Dark, full of rage and madness and anguish. It was little more than an echo and still what she'd felt made Josie's goth phase feel like nothing.

"You could feel it?" Hope asked the twins, barely able to keep herself from shuddering at the thought. She hadn't expected that, that the twins would be sensitive enough to magic to feel the effects of it from a memory.

"Yeah, so you see we know it wasn't you. It was the dark magic." Josie said, offering Hope what she hoped was a reassuring smile only to see the tribrid's face fall. Before she could even consider why Hope pulled her hand out of her grasp, retreating a few steps away.

"Is that what you think? That I was controlled by the magic, that it wasn't me that did this?" Hope asked, her tone almost condescending. She supposed it made sense they'd think that way, it was what had happened with Josie after all. But she didn't have that as an excuse for what she'd done, despite the literal voices in her head from the Hollow's magic.

"The Hollow's magic was burning me from the inside out. It wanted to take control, to try to make me give in to it. But I wouldn't. And I found a way to ease the pain, to quiet the voices in my head. By using the magic to hurt others. I tortured my uncle, my father, Roman... and when it wasn't enough they gathered up everyone here so I could I let it out on them. I killed everyone here just to try and rid myself of it." Hope finished, a twisted smile on her face.

She remembered when Elijah had come and told her of what he planned to do, her father at his side giving his support for the idea. Gather all the Nightwalkers in one place and let her release all of the magic she could on them. They had hoped that she'd be able to burn through all of the magic at once, to purge herself of the influence but even then she'd known that there was a good chance it was just a temporary solution.

"Did it work?" Lizzie asked, her voice calmer than Hope had thought it would be given the circumstances. She was staring right at her, meeting her gaze with a steady look that Hope actually found hard to maintain.

"For a few hours." Hope answered, averting her eyes from Lizzie's. The Hollow's magic had sunk itself in deep, refusing to let her purge all of it from herself no matter how she had tried. Then it would use her own vast reserves to restore itself, gaining a stronger hold each time. "But it came back, it always came back. It was actually the two of you who stopped it."

By transferring the Hollow's power into her father, effectively condemning him to death. She didn't blame the twins though, it had been her dad's decision, he had made that plenty clear. She doubted that they had even realized what they had done at the time.

"That's why it felt familiar." Josie said, straightening up as she pulled herself back together. That had likely been why they could feel it's power from Hope's memories, because they had felt the real thing before. The power they had pulled out of Hope and transferred into Klaus had been enormous, far more than what had corrupted her.

"It was killing you, wasn't it?" That was the only thing that really made sense. They hadn't been close with Hope at the time, that had been even before her disastrous crush on the girl, but looking back now she could piece things together.

"Kind of," Hope replied. It was a bit more complicated than that. The Hollow had wanted to take control of her body, to finally have vessel capable of holding and utilizing it's immense power. But she hadn't been willing to let that happen, and every moment after taking the power back within her had been a war for control. A war that had actually been tearing her apart from the inside. Any other witch would have died from the strain within a day, if they had even been able to fight back at all.

"So that means we saved your life, when we were, like, twelve? Damn we're awesome." Lizzie said, grinning over at her sister. She barely remembered that night, it was so long ago it was as if they had been completely different people, but she was always grateful to have another point in the 'Saved Hope' column. The score was still ridiculously in Hope's favor but they were slowly catching up.

Seeing Josie smile back at her twin, Hope shook her head incredulously. "Really? That's it? I killed all of these people and you don't even seem to care?" Josie's reaction had been about what she'd expected but Lizzie didn't seem to care at all, not after the initial shock had passed.

"They deserved it, didn't they?" Lizzie asked, not getting why Hope seemed upset. Did she want them to be scared of her? Actually she probably did, Hope was dumb like that.

"That doesn't make it right." Hope contended, remembering the conversation she had with her dad shortly after the massacre. She couldn't pretend that killing all of the people had been the right thing to do, that she hadn't done it primarily out of a desire for revenge and an attempt to alleviate her own pain.

"And? I don't care about them. I care about you." Lizzie said earnestly, moving across the room to be closer to Hope. "So get that through that thick wolf skull of yours, and quit trying to find reasons to push us away."

Hope flinched at that, as Lizzie's point hit home. She was doing it again. Pushing, poking, trying to force people away so they didn't get caught up in the mess that was her life. But they didn't care, they weren't leaving her. Even after seeing what she was really capable of. "You're not afraid?" That was what worried her the most, that they would be afraid of her. The way so many people were of her family, the way she had once been of her father.

"I told you before, the safest place I can be is right next to you. That hasn't changed." Lizzie said, deliberately stepping across the bodies littering the floor to stand in front of Hope, reaching over to take her hand and give it a reassuring squeeze. "So, why don't you quit with the self-doubt and find this key we need."

"Lizzie's right. I don't care what you've done, I care about you." Josie said, moving forward to be closer to Hope as well.

Hope started to say something before stopping, turning away from the twins and wiping at her eyes for a moment. It wasn't like her to be this emotional, she usually had better control of her emotions than this. And she certainly knew better than to say some of the things she had, she was no stranger to holding secrets after all. "Oh, fuck. I get it now."

"Umm, what?" Lizzie said, glancing over at Josie to see if she had any ideas. Hope had looked to be on the verge of a breakdown but now she was pulling herself back together in front of them. It was almost infuriating how easy it seemed to be for her.

"This place, it's constructed from my subconscious right? So all the little things I had locked away are right at the surface, just waiting for an excuse to get out." Hope said, finally having put it together.

"Like with Simulandon, he couldn't keep from blurting out things." Josie realized, understanding what Hope was saying.

"Right, that's why I'm such a mess." Hope said, kind of annoyed that it had taken her this long to realize that. She had far better control than Simulandon had though, because her conscious mind was still in control. As long as she watched herself then it should be okay, and there weren't any major secrets that she needed to keep from Josie and Lizzie, so that was a relief.

Now realizing just why she had been so on edge Hope locked her emotions back down as best as she was able to. "Ok, the key should be upstairs. Just need to get it and then we can leave." She said, turning and heading for the staircase, Josie and Lizzie following after her.

* * *

"So who's th-" Lizzie started to say, before Josie reached over and put a hand over her sisters' mouth.

"Who was he?" Josie asked, posing the question much more tactfully than whatever Lizzie had been about to blurt out.

"A priest, the first human I killed. The one that triggered my curse." Hope answered, looking down at the body in front of them. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, he looked like he could have been sleeping, well if it hadn't been for the blood running from his eyes and ears.

"We didn't know anyone else was here, and he got caught up on in my spell. It was an accident." Hope continued, her voice nearly monotone as she repeated what her family had told her time and time again. "Doesn't make it any less my fault though."

"Was this the first time you had killed anyone?" Lizzie asked before Josie could think to stop her. It was a common enough question to ask around the school, but she couldn't ever remember asking Hope. Since she had triggered her werewolf curse they knew she had to have killed someone but they had never felt right asking.

"That really isn't something you should ask." Hope replied, giving Lizzie an empty smile that made the girl look away for a moment. "But no it wasn't. The first time was at my mom's wake, some of the vampires from the group below attacked it. I killed one group but the rest got away."

She still regretted that, a quicker spell, not hesitating as much as she had, targeting the other van first. A small difference and things might have been so much different. Different didn't necessarily mean better but she had a hard time believing things could have gone much worse than they had. That wasn't why she was here though, she just needed to get the key and leave. "Look around, the key should be up here somewhere."

"Why are you so certain it's here?" Josie asked as she started looking around, moving aside old books and files as she searched.

"Because out of all the people I killed he's the only one I regret." Hope answered simply, lifting one of the fallen bookshelves to look underneath it. The fact that she was avoiding facing Josie or Lizzie was purely coincidental.

"Found it." Lizzie said, both girls turning to look at her, seeing her spinning the key around by the short chain it was attached too.

"Where was it?" Hope asked, wanting to know how Lizzie had immediately found it.

"In the most dramatic place it could be of course, around the dead guy's neck." Lizzie's said, still spinning the key around by the chain that held it. Hidden symbolic objects were pretty common in the type of books she liked to read, and they were always hidden away in the most dramatic place they could be. So that was where she had started. "Here," she said, tossing the key over to Hope, causing the room to go completely black the second she made contact with it.

* * *

For a moment Hope had started to worry, before the light returned and she realized they had been returned to common area of the main compound. The door they had gone through was gone, with just a blank wall there in its place. "Huh, so that's what fast travel feels like." Lizzie said, before pretending she couldn't see the curious looks Hope and Josie gave her. "Whatever, go make sure it works."

"It better work after all of that," Hope muttered as she walked to the main door. She didn't really expect it not too, this world had been constructed by her aunts after all and they would never do anything to hurt her. She doubted there would be any surprises like the one she had forced Elijah to endure. Besides the hell it seemed her own subconscious wanted to put her through of course.

Sliding the key into the one of the padlocks she sighed in relief as she felt it click into place. Turning the key caused the heavy padlock to pop open, before the key, lock, and chains attached to it all disappeared. "One down, three to go."

"Well, which door next?" Lizzie asked, walking up to one of them and trying to see if there were any clues.

"Can you really not tell what's inside without entering?" Josie asked, joining her twin to observe the doors.

"I doubt it, that would be too easy." Hope said, annoyance clear in her voice. Which since this was all made from her own mind really just meant she was annoyed with herself.

"And you never can do easy." Lizzie commented with roll of her eyes. Leave it to Hope to make this as complicated as possible.

"Gee, thanks Lizzie. Tell you what, why don't we take a trip through your subconscious after this? See how well you're handling everything." Hope snapped back, sarcasm dripping from every word.

"Umm, no. I'm just now getting all the pieces glued back together. I don't need you messing it up." Lizzie replied glibly, Hope looking down at her feet uncomfortably at that. Whatever, she knew her mind was fucked up and she had accepted that. Mostly. Wasn't like she had a ton of other options.

"Guys, can we focus? I thought you wanted to get out of here quickly." Josie said, directing the later part of her query toward Hope. She wouldn't deny being interested in seeing the parts Hope had locked away but she still felt guilty being here. And it was obvious to her that Hope was using the banter with Lizzie to distract herself from what she was feeling. It was better if they just ripped the band-aid off and got through this as quickly as they could.

"Fair point. She does need to get back and clear up those rumors her eulogy caused." Lizzie agreed, trying to keep from smirking as she saw Hope turn to look at her with suspicion. It was nice to see that she could mess with Hope even in this kind of situation. And maybe it'd help Hope get it through her head that she didn't think any different of her after what she'd seen.

"What eulogy?" Hope asked, already dreading the answer. Given Lizzie's flair for the dramatic and complete disregard for common sense she had an idea but she was really hoping she was wrong. "Lizzie, what eulogy?"

"Oh just this very touching one that you gave at my funeral. Well that I gave, while pretending to be you." Lizzie said, both Hope and Josie staring at her wide-eyed. Huh, had she not told Josie about it? Whoops.

"Unfortunately, it was so heartfelt and sincere that some of the students seem to have misunderstood and think we were lovers." Also because she had said as much. Apparently saying that she was a lover while listing off a few of her many positive attributes had been a mistake. Which was ridiculous, did they really think Hope would have acted like that at her funeral if they had been lovers? She might have had a small meltdown while disguised as Hope but it wasn't at the level it should have been if they had been together.

Hope for her part didn't even say anything, instead just bringing her hands to her head and trying to push away the headache she felt coming on. Which just thinking about the logistics of given that she was inside her head was about to give her another one. Letting out a huff she turned and picked a door at random, wanting to get this over with. Well not quite random, as there was one in particular she intended to avoid for as long as possible. The moment she opened it, the world around them faded to black once more, as they transitioned to whatever memory she was going to torture herself with this time.

* * *

Hope blinked in confusion as the world popped back into being, the three of them now being in what looked to be an art gallery of all things. She hadn't been to one of these in years, not since before her Mom had died. But it was odd, she couldn't think of any bad memories associated with one of the gallerias she'd been to, in fact all the memories she had of them were pretty much the exact opposite.

"This doesn't make sense," Hope said, looking around to see if there was anything familiar about this place. It didn't look like anywhere she had been before and a cursory glance at the artwork didn't spark anything either. "I don't think I've ever been here."

"Maybe it's representational? Of something you wished had happened?" Josie said, trying to think it through herself. Her own subconscious world had been quite a bit different, and far too influenced by Snow White, but there were many parts that had served as a representation of something else.

"Representational of what? A bad taste in art?" Lizzie chimed in, walking around the hallway and peering at the paintings. Every piece of art featured people in it, sometimes large groups of them, and mostly in various states of dead. Seriously the only common theme she could see between the art was violence and the color red. "Is this stuff you painted?"

"No," Hope answered immediately, having already dismissed that. She would have recognized her own work immediately.

"Hope... I think this is your dad." Josie said, hesitating to say so as doubt swept through her. It certainly looked like the man they had seen earlier in Hope's memories but in the painting he was covered in blood, holding a heart in his hand with a pair of bodies behind him.

"I remember this," Hope said softly as she came to stand beside Josie. More like she could never forget it, as it had been the source of nightmares as a child. "I was nine. I used astral projection to go see my dad and got a front row seat to him ripping a woman's heart out."

Josie and Lizzie glanced at each other at that, not knowing what to say. How exactly did you respond to that? They had some rather dark childhood memories as well but they didn't remember seeing their parents murder someone right in front of them. Not the way Hope apparently had.

Hope stared at the painting for a moment before getting an idea as to what this place was. Moving to the next one she tried to place it, a rather violent crime scene photo with nearly a dozen bodies in it. "This was from Paris, my dad killed them right before he came to New Orleans." She had heard about the slaughter after returning to the school, and morbid curiosity had led her to look it up. She should have learned her lesson after the first few times but she could never help herself.

Moving on she went to the next piece of art, then the next. Each one was similar, a photo full of people her family had killed. And not just her father either. There was a group of witches that she'd learned that her mom had murdered, on her Aunt Davina's orders of all things. Another few witches that she remembered learning that Elijah had slaughtered for trying to kill her mom while she was pregnant. A pack of werewolves that she heard about her dad killing around when she had turned twelve. Every photo or picture here represented people that her family had killed, and not just one or two but entire groups or families.

"Have you figured it out yet?" A hauntingly familiar voice said, Hope turning around slowly as she heard it, dreading what she would see.

"Dad." Hope managed to say, seeing her father standing at the far end of the hall. He looked just as he had when she'd last seen him, leaning against the wall as if he hadn't a care in the world, casually observing a painting of a what she was pretty certain was his first raid against the Nightwalkers. But it couldn't really be him, her father was dead, because of her. This was just another cruel joke from her subconscious.

"Hello, sweetheart. It's been far too long." Klaus said, giving her a smile that she knew couldn't be real. "Not going to give me hug?"

"If you were anything more than a subconscious projection then I would." Hope said, digging her nails into her palms to help her keep focus. "Why are you here?"

"Because every gallery needs a curator. And this is something of a greatest hits collection for me." Klaus said, putting his hands behind his back and walking to one of the nearby paintings. "Take this one for example. Baby Hope's first massacre. A real family outing with Elijah, Hayley, Marcel and myself all joining in. Only killed three witches but bonus points for two of them being teenagers I guess."

Hope grit her teeth at that, knowing what it was referring to. Of course she did, it was merely a projection of her own subconscious, and she knew everything it did. "Yeah I got it, these represent everyone my family has killed."

"Ha, is that what you think? There isn't anywhere near enough here to represent that." Klaus said, smiling as he gave a callous chuckle. "No, this place merely represents all of those killed because of you."

Hope's eyes went wide at that, glancing around at the artwork she could see. Many of them she knew were connected to her in someway, and others were the result of Klaus' rampage after they had split up the Hollow. She had learned in the time since that his massacres weren't as random as they had appeared, he had a list and had been crossing off every name on it. And anyone associated with them as well, just to be thorough.

"And what are you supposed to represent? Hope's flair for drama?" Lizzie asked, glaring at Klaus. She wasn't exactly a fan of what she had seen so far. It didn't look like he was here to help, and instead seemed to be trying to push Hope toward something.

"You should be more careful. Wouldn't want to be the next feature in this gallery." Klaus taunted, a dark smile on his face.

"Don't you dare threaten them." Hope snapped, straightening her spine and glaring at Klaus, her voice resonating with anger at the perceived threat.

"That wasn't a threat. Just a friendly warning of what happens to those who get involved with you." Klaus replied, Hope glaring at him as she tried to remind herself that it wasn't really her father. Just her fucked up mind wanting to make this as difficult as possible. And doing a damn good job of it.

"Hope, remember, this is your mind. You control it." Josie said moving to stand between Hope and Klaus, and getting Hope to focus on her instead. Granted it was a little different than it had been in her head, as this was a Chambre de Chais constructed from Hope's subconscious, but she had to have some control still.

"Oh she's well aware of that. She just can't make up her mind if she really wants to get rid of me." Klaus said, Hope wincing as his point hit home. It was true, even though she knew it wasn't her dad it still looked like him, sounded like him. She had missed him, and even if it was a lie she couldn't help but want to indulge in it for a time, it was how she had ended up stuck here in the first place. "Maybe I should make up her mind for her."

The instant he finished speaking he blurred forward, heading right for Josie, fangs out to rip into her. He never even got close. Before he had made it five feet Hope slammed him into the wall with her magic, keeping one hand clenched into a fist as she held him there. She had been expecting something like that from the start, and had been ready for it. With a flick of her wrist she snapped the projection's neck, letting out a sigh in relief as she saw the body flicker and fade away as she did.

"Are you okay?" Hope heard Josie ask from behind her, prompting her to turn and look at Josie curiously. She hadn't been the one that had been about to be eaten, hadn't been the one attacked by a projection from her subconscious.

"Am I okay? Josie, he tried to kill you." Hope pointed out, incredulous of how little Josie seemed to care about that fact.

"But you're the one crying." Josie said softly, Hope's hands darting to her eyes as she realized for the first time that tears had been leaking out from them. It wasn't like Josie wasn't a little shaken at having Hope's father, or at least something that looked like him, come at her with the intent to kill. But she had barely had time to realize it was happening before Hope had stopped him.

"Let's hurry and get out of here," Lizzie said, looking at Hope with some concern as well. It was clear that this place was getting to her, and she hadn't missed how angry Hope had been when Klaus first threatened them. She knew that Hope pushed people away to try and keep them safe, that she believed that they were in danger just by being near her. She had heard as much from the girl herself. But it was quite different to see the root of that belief, to see that Hope actually had a pretty strong reason to act that way.

"There should be a key somewhere. I would guess behind one of the paintings." Hope said, looking around the room as she got her tears under control. The easiest thing would've been if the fake Klaus had the key but as they'd already established she didn't do easy.

"One of the- Hope there are hundreds of paintings here." Lizzie said incredulously, as she gestured around them. They were in just one one hallway of what seemed to be a rather large art gallery. Hundreds might actually be too low of a guess.

"Yeah, I know." Hope said morosely, looking around at them with something very close to dread. Hundreds of paintings, most with multiple people in them, all representing those who had died because of her. As it was the result of her subconscious she couldn't trust it to be one hundred percent accurate but she had a general idea of how many people had died because of her since before she'd been born. A couple of thousand was a low estimate. "Look for something that doesn't seem to belong."

As Hope turned and walked away Josie elbowed her twin in the side, ignoring the indignant squeak she let out. "You couldn't have said that better?"

"What? There are. Not my fault Hope's family solved everything with violence." Lizzie said, getting another jab to her ribs for that. "Ow, quit that."

"Can't you see how much this hurts her? All of these people died because of her." Josie pointed out, not having missed how Hope had reacted to everything they'd seen. It was clear that Hope felt guilty for the people that had died because of her. And there were thousands of them. The weight of that guilt must be crushing and she'd carried it for so long now, no wonder she tried to push everyone away.

"Yeah, so quit elbowing me and go find the key so we can leave." Lizzie said, stepping away from her sister and her pointy elbows. "The sooner we find it, the sooner we can leave Hope's murder scratch-book."

Glaring at her twin for that comment Josie nevertheless turned and headed the other way. Searching on her own she wondered what would qualify as not belonging here. The artwork was all expertly done, to the level she would expect to see in a museum, just with more blood and gore. It was actually starting to be unnerving to walk among the paintings, and the pristine white walls of the gallery were not helping, their unnatural cleanliness contrasting the painting's rather messy contents. Eventually one of the pieces caught her attention, getting her to stare at it curiously before smiling, this had to be it. "Guys! I think I found it."

* * *

"Huh, less dramatic than I thought it would be." Lizzie said as she looked at the painting her twin had found. It was a rather simple piece, most of it taken up with a large easel that had a T-chart on it. At the top was the name Hope Mikaelson, with the dividing line of the chart cutting through her first and last names. On the Hope side were dozens of nice, neat tally marks, covering about three-fourths of that side. Then on the Mikaelson side the entire page was completely covered in marks, far messier than the ones on the opposite side, almost appearing to be scratched into the chart. And at the bottom she could see a small notation saying that it was page one of ninety-nine.

"Score's closer than I thought it would be." Hope said softly, not really meaning for either of the twins to hear her. Going from the looks she got in response though they clearly had. "It's nothing, just something stupid I used to do."

"Then no problem telling us, right?" Lizzie said, not believing that it was nothing for even a second. If this was where the key to leave this place was then it had to be something meaningful.

Looking between the stubborn expression on Lizzie's face and the pout on Josie's, Hope caved. "Fine, I used to keep score. A point for every time I did something good. Helped someone, was extra nice, etc. And then I'd lose a point any time I did something wrong, if I lost my temper or hurt someone, or was selfish or whatever."

"That's... Hope, you can't do that to yourself." Josie said, her face twisting into a pained expression at that. She understood trying to force yourself to always be good but what Hope was describing was on another level.

"Heh, Marcel said the same thing when I told him." Hope said, a fond smile on her face as she remembered. But much like then she didn't agree. "At the time I thought my family had sacrificed everything to keep the Hollow's magic from taking me over. And then my Mom died to protect me, my Dad died to take the magic with him, and Elijah died because he couldn't see a reason to live anymore. They sacrificed themselves for me. I have to be worth it."

"Do you really think that's what they would want?" Lizzie asked, knowing that Hope couldn't believe that.

"No, but that doesn't change that I need to try." Hope said, refusing to meet either Josie or Lizzie's gaze. She had promised her Dad before he died that she'd be ok, that she'd keep going, that she'd try and live. But the weight of their sacrifice weighed on her constantly, and she couldn't help but feel that what she was doing wasn't worth what it had cost. It had been why she had been so ready to sacrifice herself to destroy Malivore, because at last she could do something that might equal her parents sacrifice.

"It doesn't matter anyways, I don't keep score anymore." Hope said, stepping up to the painting and moving it aside to find a key hung from a short chain on the wall behind it.

"Why not?" Josie asked, tilting her head slightly as she asked the question. From the way Hope had been acting and the significance it seemed to hold she would have assumed she still did.

"Because," Hope said, a sad smile tugging at her mouth as she reached out to take the key and gallery started to fade away to black, "I can never catch up."

* * *

Now back in the common area of her New Orleans home Hope clutched the key in her hand, not wanting to look back at the twins. Moving to the main door she slid the key into one of the padlocks, nodding in satisfaction as another set of chains fell away.

"What do you mean that you can't catch up?" Hope heard Lizzie ask from behind her, prompting her to sigh in response. She was still having trouble controlling herself and was letting things slip. She could ignore the question of course, but then Josie and Lizzie would probably both start pouting and she didn't want to deal with that.

"You saw that gallery, everyone you could see in those paintings is dead because of me. There were thousands of them, and that's just a fraction of what my family has done. I'm the heir to the Mikaelson legacy. A legacy of a thousand years of blood, and murder, and chaos." The Mikaelson's were the monsters of the supernatural world, the things that were used as bedtime stories to scare kids into behaving. And she couldn't pretend that it wasn't a very deserved reputation.

"So, what? You're going to try and make up for that by being the perfect little hero?" Lizzie said, not believing what she was hearing. Actually scratch that, of course she would do this, it was such a Hope thing to do. "Hope Mikaelson, slayer of monsters and savior of us poor students. And hey, don't worry about getting too attached because she'll be erasing herself from existence the first chance she gets."

"Lizzie!" Josie hissed, not believing that her sister had said that. Hope was just staring at her twin, her mouth open slightly in shock.

"That's not what I-" Hope tried to defend, only to be cutoff.

"No, shut up. I'm tired of this. I'm tired of you thinking that your life only matters to balance some grand cosmic scale. I'm tired of you trying to shoulder everything on your own, and I'm fucking tired of you not giving a damn about yourself." Lizzie said, her voice shaking in anger as she stepped closer to Hope, the girl seeming even smaller than normal in front of her. "I told you before, we don't exist for just one purpose, so get that through your thick skull already."

"She's right, Hope. Don't try to take everything on your own. Let us help you." Josie said, echoing her sisters sentiments. It was so easy to just let Hope handle everything, to trust that if you just got out of her way she'd tear through whatever the monster of the week was. And to be fair she pretty much had. But it wasn't right of them to put that kind of burden on her, she was still just a teen, like them. A teen who had been through more than they had every realized and been shaped by it in ways they only now noticed.

"I'm not sure I know how." Hope admitted, deciding to be honest with the twins. By now this was just how she was, she didn't think anything of it. She was always the first into the fire because she was the one that could handle getting burned. And if it ever proved too much then that just meant that she'd found something worth sacrificing herself for like her father had.

"Just promise that you won't leave us again." Lizzie said, reaching out and taking Hope's hand. "If you jump into Malivore again then you better know that I'll be diving in to come and get you."

"If I were to jump into Malivore you wouldn't remember that you even said that." Hope said, an amused smile on her face. Sure it was a rather dark idea but she still found it funny.

"Yes she will," Josie chimed in. "We know how to restore the memories now, and it won't be that hard to come up with a system to let us know if you vanish. I'm not losing you again."

"You're serious about this, aren't you?" Hope said, honestly finding it a little hard to believe. It was barely more than a year ago that the highlight of her and Josie's relationship was her blackmailing Josie into doing a locator spell. And her relationship with Lizzie had been even worse. Now they were saying they'd be willing to jump into a hell dimension to come save her.

"Duh, we came here didn't we?" Lizzie pointed out, getting up to tilt her head in acknowledgment.

"I'm not sure I like you comparing my mind to a hell dimension." Hope said, her tone almost teasing as she smiled widely at Lizzie.

"You're right, that would have been Josie's fairy-tale wasteland." Lizzie said, ignoring her sister's protest as she smiled back at Hope. "So which door next?"

Hope looked back at the doors at Lizzie's question, eyeing one with dread. There were only two left, and while she knew what lay behind one she had no idea what might be behind the other. She was in a better mood now than she would have thought was possible thanks to the twins but she couldn't help but dread what still remained. It wasn't just possible but quite likely that the worse had yet to be seen. Feeling Josie and Lizzie move closer to stand beside her she nodded, at least she wouldn't have to face it alone.

* * *

**Author's Note:** This would be a lot easier to write if it was just one twin instead of both. Josie and Lizzie want to fight for screentime, and Lizzie usually wins because it's Lizzie. Which is pretty in character but makes it difficult to balance. Still I'm trying to be fair to both of them. And no that wasn't really Klaus, just Hope's mind being mean to her. Because Hope's a pro at torturing herself. Chapter 2 done, one more to go. Be sure to do the normal like, fave, follow stuff. And leave comments. I always want to know what people think of my writing. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:** So this is going to be four chapters now. This chapter got kinda long, and I liked where it ended, so there will be at least one more to wrap up everything. So yeah, let me know what you think about it. Oh and warnings for major character death and suicide I guess. It's a dream/vision/mind thing but still applies I guess.

**What's Left Inside**

"Any guesses as to what we're walking into next?" Josie asked, wondering if Hope had any idea. If each door represented a traumatic experience for Hope then with only two left then surely she'd be able to narrow it down. How many horrible memories could she have? Even as the thought ran through her head Josie winced, knowing the answer was likely far higher than she would have liked to hear.

"I really don't know. With how strange the last room was I just don't know anymore." Hope said, shrugging her shoulders. If this place was willing to throw an art gallery of all the people her family had killed at her then she wasn't sure she could rule anything out.

"Seriously? Nothing? How many traumas do you have?" Lizzie asked, Josie's mouth dropping open as she heard her twin carelessly give voice to the thought she had decided was too personal to ask.

"Too many, clearly." Hope said, rolling her eyes at Lizzie's typical bluntness. There were a few memories she thought could be next, but none really fit. The first time Landon died, being stuck in Malivore with mud-boy, the night she turned for the first time. There were plenty of candidates but none stood out to her, mostly because there were mitigating factors for them.

Landon had come back (and learned he was a phoenix), her time in Malivore had felt shorter than it was, Clark was very dead, and while most everything had sucked the night she had turned for the first time she had been able to see her mom again, even if it was likely just a really vivid dream. As a result none of them really stood out to her, at least in comparison to the worst of what she'd been through. "It's not exactly easy to narrow down what it could be either."

"Oh please, how hard can it be? Just pick the top four worst moments of your life." Lizzie said, rolling her eyes at how difficult Hope was making this.

"Does that include this one?" Hope retorted, getting Lizzie to glare at her in response. "If you think it's that easy then why don't you try?"

"You mean besides basically everything that's happened in the last three days?" Lizzie said, taking Hope's clearly sarcastic suggestion seriously. "Let's see there's the time I got possessed by a demon, pretty much everything with Sebastian, every time I walked in on Josie tonguing Satan, that birthday our mom showed up as a zombie, the time I got woke up at five in morning because Josie had a sex dream about you..."

"Lizzie!" Both Josie and Hope said sharply, snapping the blonde out of her rambling. Josie's face was bright red by now and Hope's wasn't much better as she avoided making eye contact with the brunette.

"That was more than four, wasn't it?" Lizzie said, acting as if that was the issue. Shrugging she ignored the looks she was getting from Hope and Josie, "Okay, I see you may have a point there. Our lives are clearly more traumatic than I first thought."

"Gee, thanks for that." Hope said, rolling her eyes as she tried to avoid eye contact with Josie. She would have thought it was just Lizzie being Lizzie but given the way Josie was avoiding looking at her there was at least some truth to it. But now was definitely not the time to get into it. "How about I just open it and find out?"

"Are you sure?" Josie asked, concern evident in her voice. Her twin being her usual self seemed to actually be helping Hope not dwell on what she'd been through so far but it was clear this was all taking it's toll on her.

"How much worse can it be than what we've already seen?" Hope said, almost immediately regretting it. She knew better than to tempt fate like that, and from the looks Josie and Lizzie were giving her clearly they felt the same.

"If we end up in some fucked up hell dimension next because of that, just know that I will stab you." Lizzie said, not able to believe that Hope had said something so dumb. She had been the one to implement the rule banning all such phrases in the first place.

"Right..." Hope said slowly, just ignoring Lizzie's threat. She didn't have anything to stab her with in the first place. And she'd heal in seconds even if she did. Turning her attention to the door, she went to open it, holding her breath as the world around them went dark and she waited to see what she'd be facing next.

* * *

"Fuck," Hope cursed as the lights didn't come back on. Malivore. That had to be where this door had led them, to when she trapped in the god forsaken pit. Not somewhere she had ever wanted to revisit but given what she was going to have to face next it wasn't that terrible, though she had no idea where the key to leave here would be. "Well this is great."

Finding it odd that neither twin had commented yet Hope looked around, failing to see either twin near her. "Josie? Lizzie!?" She called out, panic starting to set in as she didn't get a response. That wasn't good, they had been right by her side after they had gone through the last two doors, they should be here. " _Post tenebras spero lucem_ _."_

Tossing the created sphere of light into the air above her Hope looked around for the twins, spotting a familiar flash of blonde hair at the edge of where the light reached. "Lizzie!" Hope said, running to where she could see the girl laying on the ground.

Something was wrong, Lizzie wasn't responding, the clothes she was wearing were far different than she had on moments ago, and as she drew close she could tell the ground around her was stained with blood. "No, no, this can't be real." Hope said, falling to her knees beside the blonde. Reaching out she grabbed the girls shoulder, turning her over to get a glimpse of dead eyes and a blood-soaked torso before a rush of memories poured into her head.

" _I can't. I can't live like this anymore." Lizzie pleaded, chained to a tree, wearing a blue dress that she had picked out because she thought it suited Sebastian's taste._

_"Lizzie, Lizzie, it's okay we're going to fix this." Josie said, trying to reassure her sister as Hope watched from nearby._

_"No I ca- Josie move!" Lizzie yelled suddenly, her left hand ripping up and sending a wave of magic at her twin that sent her flying back. A flick of her wrist and the chains holding her fell away, the Oni-possessed Lizzie lunging at her twin._

_"No!" Lizzie screamed, fighting to get control of her body back. She wasn't strong enough though, and the On_ _i forced her to head for her twin, intending to take over a body that couldn't fight back. Before she reached her though Hope stepped in front of her, the demon killing sword leaping into her hand as she pulled it to her with magic. "Do it, please."_

_Hope hesitated, until Lizzie lunged at her once more. On instinct the sword slid up, running through Lizzie's with ease. "Lizzie!" Hope shouted, grabbing hold of the girl as she fell. There was still time to save her, if she could just get her to drink her blood then she could heal her._

_"Hope..." Lizzie said softly, the sword purging both the Oni from her mind and the block Malivore had placed on her memories. "Thank you..." She managed to get out, before her coughing up a mouthful of blood, her head falling back and listing lifelessly to the side._

_"Lizzie," Hope said softly, tears falling as she held the lifeless body of her friend. The friend she had just killed to save another._

"Lizzie!" Hope shouted, leaping to her feet before realizing that she was back in the blackness. The Lizzie she had seen in the memory was at her feet, dead from the wound she had inflicted. "It wasn't real. Lizzie's fine, she's fine. She has to be."

Hope kept repeating that in her head, backing away from the body as tried to figure out what was going on. This wasn't Malivore, she was certain of that now. And it wasn't something she had ever experienced either. So what the actual fuck was going on? As she backpedaled from Lizzie's body she felt her foot hit something behind her, turning automatically to see what it was.

_Hope was on her knees in the forest, trying to will herself to heal MG. She knew that it was the right thing to do, that it's what Landon would have wanted, but she didn't want to. She didn't want to save the life of the person that had just killed her boyfriend. But she would anyways, because it was what she was supposed to do._

_"I need your knife," Hope said, taking the blade from Dr. Saltzman and slicing her own hand open. Pressing it to MG's lips she let him drink deeply, healing his wounds and curing himself of the werewolf bite Raphael had given him. "Ow," Hope muttered feeling MG's fangs bite into her hand. There was no reason for that, what she had already offered was more than enough to cure him. "MG that's enough. MG. MG stop!"_

_Ripping her hand away Hope winced as MG's fangs tore gashes through it, getting her to glare at the young vampire as he slowly rose to his feet. "What the hell?" She yelled, her anger returning before she noticed his eyes. Blood-red, with no emotion in them._

_"MG, buddy. You alright?" Kaleb asked hesitantly, moving between Hope and MG with his hands held of cautiously._

_"More...I need more." MG growled out, moving at full speed towards Hope only to be intercepted by Kaleb._

_"MG, this isn't you. Pull it together man." Kaleb said, doing his best to fight back without hurting MG. As they locked up he quickly realized that couldn't be his intention, as MG was currently stronger than he was with Hope's blood coursing through his veins. Pulling MG in he went to get around his back, aiming at breaking his neck to subdue him. MG was more agile than he had expected though, something he realized as his fangs bit into his neck, MG having slipped through his guard in the smallest of openings._

_It was over in an instant after that, MG draining Kaleb dry in seconds as his fangs bit into his jugular. Letting Kaleb fall MG turned his attention to Hope and Dr. Saltzman, the blood he could hear coursing in their veins calling to him. Licking his lips in anticipation he lunged for Hope once more, only to coming to a sudden halt as Hope started her spell. "Imperium fluctus malleus, Imperium fluctus malleus, Imperium fluctus malleus!"_

_With the third incantation MG exploded, showering the clearing with blood as the resonance spell did it's job. He had killed Landon, had killed Kaleb, had intended to kill her and Dr. Saltzman and likely Raphael as well. There was no coming back from that, she had done what she had too._

As the false memory faded Hope turned to look behind her, wincing at what she saw. Kaleb's body, eyes still wide in shock, the puncture marks on his neck the only indication of what had happened. That and the pool of blood and gore that covered him and the area around him, all that was left of MG after what she had done.

No, after what had happened in that fake vision. MG and Kaleb were still alive and well. He had controlled himself that night, had done everything he could to atone for his actions, had just recently helped her save Josie. This wasn't real.

Looking around she spotted another body, this one a few feet from where Lizzie's lay. Alyssa Chang, her body twisted and broken. Walking over to it she forced herself to calm down, able to do so easier because unlike the others this wasn't someone she cared for. She still wasn't too sure what this place was meant to be but she was getting a sense of the rules. A body of someone she killed, touching it gave her the false memories of killing them, and then another body appeared. Because Alyssa's certainly hadn't been here before.

Hope looked around for a few moments, trying to see if there was anything else she could learn. But besides the bodies only there was only darkness. And there was still no sign of Josie or Lizzie, which she was praying meant they hadn't been able to enter this particular room. Sighing, she knelt down and placed a hand on Alyssa's corpse, bracing herself for what was to come.

_"You don't want to be responsible for someone's death. It stays with you. And you carry it forever." Hope said, trying to reach Alyssa Chang, to connect with her enough so that she would not destroy the prison world._

_"I know," Alyssa said softly, and for a moment Hope thought she'd gotten through. Then Alyssa's gaze hardened and she raised the knife once more. "And I don't care."_

_"No!" Hope shouted, slamming both her hands against the barrier Alyssa had erected. Focusing she drew on her deep wells of magic, Alyssa pausing and looking at Hope with sudden fear. "Destruccive glas stav enfala!" Hope cried out, ripping apart the barrier that Alyssa thought would protect her with pure power before stepping through._

_For a second Alyssa just stared, realizing that she might have made a serious mistake before deciding that she had come to far to turn back now. Tightening her grip on her knife she brought it down toward the Ascendant, only to scream in pain as her arms suddenly bent at ninety degrees. "Casser les os," She could hear Hope incant, only to scream even more as the bones in her legs started to break, then her ribs, her spine, her neck. All twisting and snapping before shattering into dust, killing the witch in the progress._

_"I-I didn't..." Hope said, before shaking herself out of it. She had only meant to break Alyssa's arms but had used far too much power. But so what? She had been about to kill the Saltzmans. She got what she deserved._

Shaking her head Hope pulled herself to her feet, looking for the next body she knew would be there. Alyssa's death scene was the first one she really felt had been close to having happened. Because if the girl had refused to stop then she would have ripped that barrier of hers apart and stopped her by force, even if it had meant killing her. She wouldn't let Josie and Lizzie and Alaric die because Alyssa had a temper tantrum.

She was starting to pick up on the theme though, these weren't just visions of her killing her friends(and Alyssa) for no reason. She hadn't been some mindless monster in any of them, if anything you could say she had done what was right. And that worried her, because how could killing her friends be the right thing?

Spotting another body Hope walked towards it slowly, dread filling her stomach as she recognized the dark hair. Josie, poor sweet Josie, her heart ripped from her body and laying a few feet away. She didn't want to see how she had died, didn't want to know how she had killed the girl. But she couldn't see any other way out of here either. Reaching down she placed a hand on Josie's body, dreading what she would see.

_"I know you're in there Josie, fight." Hope pleaded, trying to get through to Josie. She had almost succeeded earlier, she just needed a to push her a little more and she'd have her back. Feeling herself fall she resigned herself to letting it happen, biting down her screem as she was impaled on the post of ring._

_"How disappointing. I expected more really. Or were you hoping for someone to swoop in and s-" Dark Josie taunted, before cutting off and clutching at her head._

_'That's it Josie, fight!' Hope thought, even as she was unable to get the words out. The pole going through her was prevent her from healing and had pierced through her spine so she couldn't even move. 'Fight,' she prayed once more, as her vision clouded over before going dark._

_"Hope?" Josie said, breaking free of her darker self's control just in time to see Hope die. No, no this couldn't be happening. She had killed Hope. That wasn't possible, Hope was invincible, she always had a plan, always won, always did the things the rest of them couldn't. And she'd killed her._

_"No, I killed her." Josie heard a voice say, before feeling herself lose control of her body once more, her evil alter ego taking over once more. For a moment she tried to fight before giving in. What was the point? Lizzie was gone, Penelope had left her, she had killed Hope. There was nothing left for her to fight for._

_"That's better," Dark Josie said, smiling as she looked around the room at all the shocked spectators. "Well did everyone enjoy the show? Because it's curtains for all of you."_

_The Necromancer snorted out a laugh at that, "We should really work on your villain insults. But I suppose that can wait until after the killing."_

_"Like yours are that much bett-" Dark Josie started, before cutting herself off as she felt an immense surge of power. Knowing what it had to be she turned to where Hope's body was, glaring at the girl as she saw her float off the post she'd been impaled on, the giant wound healing instantly before their eyes._

_"I think you forgot what tribrid means," Hope taunted, her fangs showing slightly as her eyes flashed gold._

_"Ooh, round 2 then?" The Necromancer chortled, clearly not the least bit concerned by this development._

_"Round 2 then," Dark Josie agreed drawing on her magic as she readied herself to fight again. Before she could do anything though Hope vanished, appearing in front of the Necromancer with a speed that seemed like it was teleportation and muttering a spell under her breath. A moment later a column of white fire burst from within the necromancer's body, reducing it to ash within a second and causing everyone in the room to recoil from the heat._

_"What?" Dark Josie managed to get out, before Hope was upon her, driving her into the floor of the ring with a vicious blow that shattered her shoulder._

_"Come on Josie, you can fight her." Hope pleaded, still believing that Josie could be saved. She had to be able to save her._

_"No, she can't. And it's all thanks to you." Dark Josie taunted, loving the anguished expression on Hope's face. "You broke her, dying like that. That was the last little bit I needed to consume her completely. There's nothing left of that weak Josie now."_

_"You're lying," Hope said, needing to believe that was the truth. Josie couldn't be gone, she couldn't be._

_"No, I'm really not." Dark Josie said as she rose to her feet, laughing as she saw Hope start to break. This was just too perfect. "And it's all your fault."_

_"No!" Hope said, lashing out and driving her hand into Josie's chest. "She can't be gone."_

_"But she is. And nothing you can do will change that." Dark Josie taunted, still smirking even as she could feel Hope's hand wrap around her heart. She knew that Hope didn't have it in her to kill Josie, and with them in contact like this she could siphon as much as she wanted from her._

_"Josie..." Hope said, feeling her self break as she realized she was gone. Everyone she cared for ended up dead, because of her. Leaving her alone to suffer, for all of eternity now. And she was sick of it. With that one thought her emotions flipped off, retreating to the very edge of her consciousness. Still there, but so muted that she couldn't feel them._

_"She's really gone." Hope said, her voice neutral, looking at the thing that used to be Josie with disgust. There was no point in pretending anymore, Josie was gone and would never be coming back. All that was left was another monster to kill. With that she ripped her hand from her Josie's chest, pulling her heart out with it, the monster's face twisting with shock and pain as she fell to the floor._

Snapping back to reality, Hope lurched away from Josie's body, feeling sick at the very sight of it. Falling to her knees, she emptied her stomach on the dark featureless ground. That had been worse than with Lizzie. When she had seen Lizzie's death she hadn't really had time to process what was happening before falling into the next vision. But that wasn't happening here.

She could tell herself it wasn't real all she wanted, tell herself that it was just her mind torturing her. But it didn't help. Because she could remember it as if she had done it herself. She could feel the warm blood encircling her hand, feel Josie's heart beat under her grasp, feel the way it had been crushed as she had ripped it out. She had been able to feel Lizzie's life slip away as she held her, hear the screams Alyssa had let loose as she shattered her bones, feel the anger coursing through her as she had killed MG.

None of it was real but it was all in her head just the same now. And it didn't appear to be over just yet. Because even as she had pulled away from Josie's body she had seen another appear, the one she had been expecting since figuring out what this place was meant to be. Landon's.

His was different than the others she had seen, a statue like figure standing upright, his arm reached out toward something. The body itself was different, his fingers almost appearing to be dripping and one leg turning into what looked like mud halfway done. And right through his heart was a golden arrow.

"Landon," Hope sighed as she got closer. She had a good idea what had happened to him, having been dreading it ever since learning why Malivore wanted him. That wouldn't make having to see it any easier.

"You already know what happens, don't you?" A voice said from behind her, prompting her to turn and see herself walking towards her. No, not herself. The Hope from the visions, the one that had killed her friends.

"I can guess." Hope said, turning her full focus onto the fake Hope before her. She wondered just what it was supposed to be. A manifestation of some warped inner desire, a darker alter ego, a projection like the one her dad had been? There were a few options, none of which were appealing to her.

"Poor Landon, he loved me right until the end." The fake Hope said, walking up to the statue and cupping it's face. "He was taken by Malivore, turned into a vessel so that it could finally be free. Even my blood wasn't enough to kill it, as Landon's powers let it revive endlessly. So I used the golden arrow, soaked in my own blood, and killed them both. Just like you have feared would happen."

"Is that what this is supposed to be, showing me what I fear?" Hope asked, not having missed on the similarities between the visions. Kill someone she cared for, even loved in a few instances, to save someone else. And with Landon that was more true than with any of the others, as it had always been her worry since learning of the arrow and what Malivore wanted from him.

Not that he would just be taken by Malivore, or that he would be killed by the arrow. That she would have to do it herself. That it would be the only choice, either kill her boyfriend or let Malivore free to wreak havoc on the Earth once more. She had always known what choice she would make in that circumstance. And she hated herself for it.

"I always made the right choice, the choice that saved the most lives." The fake Hope said, looking at the Landon statue with something close to remorse before returning her attention to Hope. "And you know what I learned? That it doesn't matter. There's always another monster, another battle, another sacrifice. That's what my life is."

Hope held back from saying anything, willing to let the fake version of her monologue until she could figure out what was going on. And trying not to admit that she had a point, that she had felt that way before. Which was stupid because this was all created from her own subconscious, of course she would feel that there was truth to what she said.

What she really hated, and was only now realizing, was that this place was made up of fears she had actually felt. She had feared that MG wouldn't be able to control himself, that Alyssa wouldn't stop, that she wouldn't be able to save Josie or Lizzie. That Landon would die by her hand. They had all shown up in her nightmares before, never this vivid, never so real, but still there. Because she had always felt that they had been too lucky, that it was impossible to have fought this many monsters and never lost anyone. And she knew that it was up to her to keep it that way.

"So much pressure. Save everyone, kill the enemy, but don't do it the wrong way." Fake Hope said, her voice taking on a mocking lilt. "Always make the right choice, and if it destroys you then oh well. Better you than them, because your life is just a mistake anyways."

Hope winced at that, suddenly glad Josie and Lizzie weren't here to hear that. How pissed would Lizzie be to hear Hope telling herself that just moments after going off on her for not valuing her own life? But it wasn't as if a nice speech was enough to change something that had become ingrained in her mind so deeply, no matter how much she wished it was.

"Do you though?" Fake Hope asked, prompting Hope to look at her with confusion. "Do you really wish to change? Because you were perfectly fine sacrificing yourself to Malivore."

"I... I did what I had too." Hope protested, suddenly unsure if that was true. Had she really needed to?

"You had no idea if it would work, and obviously it didn't. And you should have known that, known that without your vampire side activated you couldn't kill Malivore. But you were so happy to have found a purpose that you jumped right in anyways." Fake Hope said, taking a few slow steps toward Hope. "Do you know why that is? Because you wanted to die."

"No, that's not what I... that's not what I wanted. Malivore was waking up, I had to stop it." Hope protested, taking a step away from the Fake Hope.

"Please, I'm a manifestation of your own subconscious, you can't lie to me. You've been looking for an excuse to die since you were fourteen and got your mom killed." Fake Hope said, watching as Hope recoiled as if she had been physically struck. "And you know how I know it's still true? Because of where the key to leave this place is."

"What? Where is it?" Hope said, trying to pull herself together. If she could just get it then she could leave this place behind and not have to face this anymore.

"Right here," Fake Hope said tapping over her heart. Seeing realization dawn in Hope's eyes she smiled, "That's right. To leave all you need to do is kill yourself."

"That's... You're lying." Hope countered, not wanting to believe it was true. She couldn't be that much of a masochist, could she?

"Again, I'm part of you. We can't lie to each other. But hey, if you'd rather stay here forever then be my guess. My role is done." Fake Hope said, giving Hope one last empty smile before fading away and vanishing. As she did the bodies scattered around her started to disappear too, leaving Hope alone in the dark, with just the light she had conjured earlier keeping it at bay.

Pacing back and forth Hope tried to figure out what to do. There didn't seem to be any other option. There was nothing else here, just endless darkness. The only possible way to leave seemed to be to do as her projection had said. "This is in my head, so I should be fine. It won't actually kill me." Hope said to herself, trying to rationalize it.

Josie had been eaten in her subconscious and been fine, nothing here could actually physically hurt them. And that included herself. Probably. So it should be fine, she'd tear her own heart out, get the key, and end up back in courtyard with one less hell room to deal with. And thankfully Josie and Lizzie weren't here to see her do it.

Her resolve gathered Hope plunged her right hand into her chest, gasping in pain at how much it hurt. Reaching for where her heart should be she could feel something that didn't belong there, something metal in it's place. Grabbing on to it she ripped it out, getting a glimpse of a blood covered key clutched in her hand before she collapsed forwards, the light above her going out and everything falling into darkness once more.

* * *

"Hope! Hope, wake up!" Hope groaned slightly, barely hearing the voices above hear pleading with her to wake up. Forcing her eyes open she tried to get her bearings, willing herself to sit up as she slowly gained consciousness again. "You idiot!" She heard one of the twins say, before feeling a sudden sting as she was slapped.

That served to bring her back to alertness, her hand jumping to rub her cheek where she had just been slapped. "Lizzie, what the hell?" Hope protested, before realizing that it hadn't actually been Lizzie that had slapped her. Instead it had been Josie, the brunette teen standing over her, hand pulled back as if she was about to hit her again, tears welled up in her eyes.

"Are you insane? How could you just kill yourself like that? Did you have any idea that it would actually work?" Josie said, the tears in her eyes doing nothing to hide the anger she felt towards the young tribrid.

"You were there?" Hope asked, suddenly realizing that the twins must have been able to see what had happened.

"We were pretty much beside you the entire time, but you couldn't see or hear us." Lizzie said, filling Hope in on what it had been like for them. It had been like they were ghosts, able to perceive the world around them but not interact with it. "We saw everything. Including those weird vision/memory things."

Hope winced as Lizzie finished speaking, the one redeeming thing had about that hell had been that she thought Josie and Lizzie hadn't had to go through it. Guess her mind didn't want anyone to miss out on the torture. Why the hell her subconscious was doing this to her she didn't know. Had some trace of the magic from the Hollow or dark Josie remained in her system and was acting out now? Because she couldn't really be doing this to herself, right?

"Which means we saw you punch a hole in your chest and rip your own heart out." Josie said, anger still evident in her voice. How Hope could be so reckless she didn't know. This was worse than her dad using his body to block the gargoyle or Landon drowning himself. At least they had good reasons to believe they'd be fine, there had been no such guarantees with what Hope had done.

"I had hoped you didn't have to see any of that." Hope said softly, more concerned about the twins than herself. If they had seen the visions then they had seen her kill them, and all of their friends. They couldn't be okay after seeing that. "Are you two okay?"

"Are... are we okay?" Josie asked incredulously, "We're not the ones who stabb-"

"Josie!" Lizzie said sharply, placing a hand on her sister's shoulder to calm her. It was odd to be the twin that was actually in control for once but she had been shown what to do plenty of times. "Hope, we're fine. We're not so fragile to break because of a few messed up visions."

"I didn't... I don't think that." Hope said, that not having been what she meant. She knew they were strong, but anyone would be shaken up after what they'd seen.

"Hope, we're worried about you. And don't try and say you're okay, because you're clearly not." Lizzie said, cutting Hope off before she could try and protest. There was something she wanted to ask first, had been wondering about since they had first talked to her in the courtyard, and she wasn't going to avoid it anymore. "Hope, are you sui- do you want to die?"

Hope's mouth dropped open at that, not sure how to respond. Josie seemed just as surprised as she was, which made her feel a little better. How could Lizzie even think that? _'Because she's right,'_ a voice in her head said, Hope wincing as the thought crossed her mind. "I don't want to die, Lizzie." Hope replied, giving the girl a slight smile that she could tell Lizzie didn't believe. "Really, I don't."

"But..." Lizzie added, feeling that there had to be a but on there. Otherwise Hope was clearly lying.

"But, there was a time I did." Hope admitted, watching as the anger that had still been present on Josie face drained away and was replaced by concern to match Lizzie's. Sighing she pulled her knees to her, patting the ground beside her as she leaned against the fountain in the courtyard. Taking her invitation Josie and Lizzie sat on the ground to either side of her, close enough to brush up against her as they waited for her to continue.

"That last door over there, it leads to the day my mom died." Hope began, the twins glancing to each other as they wondered where she was going with this. "I'm the reason she's dead. And not just because they targeted her because of me or because she died trying to save me. But because I'm the one that kidnapped her in the first place."

Leaning her head against the fountain Hope focused on her breathing and the heartbeats of the two girls beside her to steady herself. "I wanted to see my dad and I knew that if my mom was in trouble he would show up. So I kidnapped her, hid her away someplace he couldn't find. What I didn't know was that Roman had used me, had learned of my mom's location. The only reason they were able to capture her was because I had already done so. They would never have stood a chance otherwise. It's my fault she's dead."

And it was. Nothing anyone would ever say would change that. Her mom had been smart and strong and beautiful and loved by everyone. The Nightwalkers would have never gotten close to Hayley if it hadn't been for her. It was why she forgave Roman for his role in her death, because she knew that his part in her death was nothing compared to her own. And because she knew her mom would have wanted her too.

"After that I was a wreck and I really did want to die. My mom was dead and the rest of my family was forced to live apart to keep the Hollow's magic at bay. My dad couldn't even attend her funeral for fear of what could happen just by us being too close." Hope said, ignoring the tears in her eyes at the memory. He had eventually been there, realizing that he needed to be, consequences be damned. "I decided then to take the magic back into myself, to free my family of the burden I had become."

Feeling Josie about to speak, Hope pressed on. "I knew that it might kill me, but I didn't care. I was okay with dying if it meant saving my family. But that didn't happen. Instead my dad found a way to trade his life for mine and I have to live with the guilt of knowing both my parents are dead because of me. I couldn't die even if I wanted to, because to throw away the life my parents had given their lives for would just be too selfish."

"I spent years torturing myself, asking my self why my mom had to die for me, why my dad sacrificed himself for me. And then, standing at the edge of the Malivore pit, I understood it. They did it because they loved me. So I did the same, I sacrificed myself to kill Malivore and save all of you. And I thought everything would be okay because none of you would even remember I was gone."

"But you could have died." Josie said, pointing out the obvious. She hadn't really talked with Hope about her throwing herself into the pit, not like her sister apparently had. And from the sound of it Hope hadn't been planning on coming back. "How could you be okay with that?"

"Because it was the reason I was created." Hope said, holding up a hand to stop Lizzie before she could tear in to her over that again. "And I get that isn't a healthy way to think but that doesn't mean that it isn't right. Maybe there's another way to kill Malivore, or maybe I'll have to sacrifice myself again. I don't know but if I have to die to save all of you then I'm okay with it."

"I'm not." Josie countered, reaching down and taking hold of Hope's right arm, as Lizzie nodded in agreement. There was no way they were going to let her sacrifice again, they had already told her that. So why did she still seems so set on doing so?

"I know, and it means so much to me. But it's not like I can just turn this off." Hope said, leaning her head over to lightly bump against Josie's. It meant the world to her that the twins cared so much about her but it didn't change how she felt at her core. "I don't know how to fix the way I feel."

"Have you ever tried?" Lizzie asked, rolling her eyes as she Hope avert her gaze guilty. "No of course you haven't, because you have to be the brooding, angsty, misunderstood hero. Newsflash, that went out of style like a decade ago. Also they were pretty much always male."

"I did my therapy with Emma." Hope protested, feeling she deserved some credit for that.

"Yeah well clearly it isn't enough." Lizzie said, gesturing around broadly. "Look, as the expert here on broken minds, yours is bad. So go get real help. I have a dozen therapists I can introduce you too, and it's not like you lack the money to pay for it."

"Your mind isn't broken, Lizzie." Hope said, having never liked when Lizzie spoke about herself like that.

"See? That's your problem. You care more about trying to reassure me than fixing your own life." Lizzie said, Hope flinching slightly as her point hit home. "Hope, I am clinically insane. And because of the right medicine, a ton of therapy, and you and Josie and Dad being there for me I've been able to keep myself relatively together. You need to do the same. Or you're going to break."

"Okay. I'll try." Hope said, agreeing to Lizzie's request after a moment of hesitation. She made a good point, and if Lizzie was willing to put in the effort to heal her own mind then she couldn't really protest against doing the same. Lizzie had seemed more stable lately, Sebastian and evil twin related drama aside, so maybe it would actually help.

"Good, now how about we get out of here and then we can set that up?" Lizzie said, rising to her feet and offering a hand to help Hope up. Noticing that Josie was practically wrapped around Hope's right arm she glared at her sister, unsubtlety kicking her foot and getting her to let go as Hope laughed. That was better.

Taking Lizzie's hand Hope pulled herself up, still smiling slightly at Lizzie's antics. Half the reason she had left Josie wrap their arms together like that had been because she wanted to see how Lizzie reacted. "Just one door left," she said staring at it with dread.

"I don't suppose we can do it for you, so that you don't have to go through that?" Josie asked, even though she doubted it was possible. Lizzie shrugged at her question, walking over and trying to force the door open herself to no avail.

"Of course not, because that would be easy." Hope said, glaring at the door. Easy was the wrong word, because it would have still be pretty traumatic for Josie and Lizzie. And after the last room she was dreading it even more, because she didn't know how it would play out. From the screams she had heard earlier she was assuming she would have to see her mom die again but who knows how it would actually play out.

"Hey, we're with you ok?" Josie said, reaching down and taking Hope's hand, intertwining their fingers together. "So that we don't get separated again."

"Pretty sure that won't actually prevent it, if it's going to happen." Hope said, a slight smile on her face all the same. The smile broadened as she saw Lizzie turn around, the blonde's mouth parting and a glare being directed at their intertwined hands.

Instead of saying anything Lizzie merely stomped over, taking Hope's other hand for herself and glaring at her twin behind the tribrid's back. "Well let's do this."

"You two realize it's a little hard for me to open the door now right?" Hope said, half laughing even as she did. The twins were completely ridiculous sometimes and she loved them for it.

"You're the hero, figure it out." Lizzie said, tightening her grip on Hope's hand and pulling her forward. Sure there was an argument made for being more serious about this but given that Hope was about to see her mother die again she preferred helping her laugh while she could.

Laughing again Hope just shook her head, keeping her attention on the twins as she reached out and touched the door. In the back of her mind she could hear the screams once more, but she pushed ahead, forcing the door open and letting the world around fade to black.

* * *

As the room came into focus Hope didn't even have time to see where they were, before the screams drew her attention to the scene in front of her. "Mom," Hope said softly, tears in her eyes as she saw her mom chained to a chair in front of her, a witch applying the binding spell to her. The spell it had been her suggestion to submit to so that they could be trigger the locator spells searching for them.

"It's a piece of cake." Hayley said trying to reassure her daughter, while rolling her neck as she tried to focus on anything except the pain. Everything was so real, even the smell of her mom's flesh burning was the same, if she hadn't known she was in a _Chambre de Chais_ she would have thought they'd been thrown back in time.

"Liar," Hope heard herself say even as she looked around to get her bearings. Josie and Lizzie were chained to the wall behind her, gags in their mouths, their eyes both wide in what had to be horror at what they were seeing. Another burst of screams brought her attention back to the front, her eyes flashing gold as she saw the witch applying the last brand for the binding seal.

"No. Enough of this." Hope said, rising to her feet. She wasn't a scared, powerless fourteen year old anymore. She wasn't going to allow them to do this.

"Hope, just stay-" Roman started to say, moving to place a hand on her to keep her from interfering.

The second he touched her Hope spun around, slamming Roman into the wall between where the twins were chained up. Eyes glowing gold she brought out her own werewolf fangs on instinct, biting into the side of Roman's neck and using them to tear his throat out. She had never used her fangs while in human form, and wouldn't have been able to back when this had actually happened, but she could now. And as terrible as it was she couldn't deny the satisfaction of doing so. She may have forgiven Roman but she had never forgotten the role he played in her mom's death.

Turning she focused on the witch, the woman moving to put her mom in between them before she started to cast a spell. A circle of fire appeared around Hope, getting her to quirk an eyebrow at it as it contracted around her. Idly she wondered if that had actually been a spell the witch had known or if her subconscious had merely picked something appropriate. Given that it was meant to cripple a witch and seal away their ability to use magic before killing them she was betting on the later.

It also wasn't anywhere near enough to stop her. Bringing her chained hands down low she brought her foot up and slammed it down on the chain, tearing them off of her. It broke both thumbs and tore the skin off the back of her hands in the process but she'd heal in seconds. The witch started incantating even faster, clearly concerned at how easily Hope had broken free of her restraints. " _Arràcher soit je_ _,_ " Hope countered with, a dark smile on her face as the witch started screaming, blood running from her nose, eyes and ears.

With a final scream the witch fell to the floor, her spell fading away with her death, Hope quickly moving over to free her mom. Hayley was unconscious, the witch having finished the binding spell, but that didn't matter. She knew there were other ways to get her out here. Looking back to where the twins were she flicked her wrist, snapping their restraints off. "Roman had a daylight ring. Take it from him and then we can leave." She'd only had four years to torture herself for forgetting that detail originally.

"Hope... where exactly are we going to go?" Josie asked, being able to tell that this clearly hadn't been what had happened originally. They had been dropped into the moment Hayley had died and Hope had apparently decided she wasn't going to just sit and watch. But that wouldn't actually change anything, they couldn't save Hayley no matter what they did.

"I don't know!" Hope snapped back, focusing on her mom as she tried to get her to wake up. They couldn't expect her to just leave her here. She'd get her mom out of here and then figure out where the key they needed was.

"Hope..." Hayley said softly, barely able to speak after what she'd been through. Forcing her eyes open she saw her daughter standing over her, their captors dead at their feet. "Good work."

"It runs in the family," Hope said, smiling through tears as she talked with her mom.

"That it does," Hayley said, a slight smirk on her face. Granted more through Klaus' side than hers but she was no slouch herself when it came to violence. And while she never wanted for her daughter to have to do something like this, if it was kill or be killed she knew what she'd pick every time.

"Oh, how very sweet." A female voice said from the hallway by the front door. Hope's eyes flashed gold as she turned to see Greta there, not having been ever able to forget the woman's voice. Last time she had been able to sneak in and render her unconscious before she had even realized she was there. This time though she was awake, aware, and most importantly still had full access to her magic.

" _Conbustio incendia_!" Hope cast the moment she saw Greta. Thrusting both hands forward she sent a torrent of green flames at her, the fire moving to chase Greta down even as she tried to run. The moment it caught her it latched on to her, stopping her movements as the remainder swept over her. As the screams reached her ears Hope actually smiled, before a second set of screams started.

Turning Hope looked on in horror as she saw the same green flames she had conjured wrapped around her mother, causing her to scream in pain. Panic swept over her, Hope trying in vain to cancel the spell and stop the flames. There was no reason for her mom to have been caught up in it, she had been behind her, she should've been safe. Instead her mom was dying from the same fire that killed Greta. _'Just like last time,'_ Hope realized as she fell to her knees, tears pouring from her eyes.

Soon the screams had faded and all that was left the sound of Hope sobbing, Josie and Lizzie standing awkwardly against the far wall. Everything had happened too quickly for them to do anything, and now they had no idea what to do. What could they possibly say after that? "I killed her..." They finally heard Hope say, her voice broken in a way they had never heard before. "I killed her again."

"Hope," Josie said, starting to move towards her before a sudden surge of magic stopped her cold. Looking over at Lizzie she could tell that she felt it too, an enormous surge of magic like nothing they had ever felt before. Looking back at Hope she could see her slowly getting back on her feet, her eyes glowing gold.

"I'm done with this," Hope said coldly, clenching her fist before opening it and letting out a wave of magic. The magic swept over Lizzie and Josie, doing nothing to them but everything else it touched was ripped apart, before fading away as if it had never existed. Just before Hayley's body vanished Lizzie was able to spot the key, clutched tightly in her charred right hand.

As the world around them faded the twins realized that Hope wasn't stopping, the magic still pouring off of her in waves. She wasn't merely tearing down the last room they had been in but the entire _Chambre de Chais_. There were odd cracks spider-webbing out across the darkness that surrounded them, point where lights of various colors poured through. They could see Hope focusing in on one point, a giant tear forming were she aimed, before she ripped her hands apart and tore open the _Chambre de Chais_ with them, multicolored light pouring in and blinding them.

* * *

"Hey, take it easy. Sit up slowly." Lizzie could hear someone say, paying no heed to their advice as she sat up in a jolt looking for Hope. It seemed that her twin had come to at the same time and was doing the same, both girls struggling to their feet and moving to where Hope lay on the floor in between them.

As they moved to her they could see Hope's eyes slowly open, relief flooding through them as they realized she was ok. Although judging by the tears welling up in her eyes okay wasn't really the right word. Not even giving her time to sit up Josie and Lizzie practically threw themselves at her, wrapping her in a tight hug between the two of them as the tears started to fall.

All around them Hope's family just stood quietly, able to tell that something had clearly happened while Hope was trapped in her mind. What that was they didn't know but for Hope to break down like this it had to be bad. "I killed her again..." They were barely able to make out as Hope sobbed, with the twins doing their best to comfort her.

"What the bloody hell happened in there?" Rebekah finally asked, wanting an answer immediately. There was only one thing that would break Hope like that, Hayley's death. And from the sound of it she had been forced to live through it again. That was the only thing that explained what she had said.

"I don't know. The spell should have been constructed from Hope's subconscious. All she would have needed to do was open the door and leave." Freya said, not understanding how her niece could end up like this. At worst they should've needed to find a few totems that represented them so they could leave.

"Let's just give them a few minutes, we'll get our answers when they can give them." Alaric said, looking pointedly at where his daughters were still latched onto Hope. It was probably best to leave things to them, as they seemed to have some idea of what had happened to Hope, given how quickly they had moved to console her. Getting nods in agreement the adults slowly moved out of the room, Alaric pausing at the door to look back at them. Hope was the strongest teenager he had ever met, far stronger than she should ever have to be, so to see her broken like this was a shock. But there wasn't anything he could do, he just had to trust that his daughters could help her.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** So this was kind of a bitch to write. When I originally thought of this it was meant to be a Season 3ish story, all of this would've really been just the first episode where the twins got to see what Hope went through and then there would be a full season to deal with the consequences. Then I decided to make it a shorter story and had to find a way to close it. And I like what I came up with, even if it took a while, because there's no magic switch she can press to fix her issues. It takes time and effort and being willing to try. And I tried to show the start of that here. So without further ado, cause this AN has really gone on long enough, the final chapter of What's Left Inside. Enjoy, and leave a comment to let me know what you think, both of the chapter and the story as a whole.

**What's Left Inside**

"How you doing, kiddo?" Marcel asked, leaning against the doorway to the Hope's room as he observed her. She had half a dozen books spread across her bed and was focused on them, much as she had been for the last day since waking up.

"Mostly wishing people would quit asking me that," Hope answered tersely. Honestly she had been asked that more times in the last day than she had in the last few years. It was annoying.

"Not happening. Not until I'm sure you're okay at least." Marcel said, shaking his head as he entered the room. After waking up Hope had retreated back in on herself in a way that had him concerned. A short explanation of what had happened in the _Chambre de Chais_ had been all they got before she had demanded to know what had happened while she was unconscious. Which had led to her locking herself up in her room ever since.

"I'm fine. I'll be better once I know how to kill the Necromancer and stop Malivore." Hope said, not even looking up from the book she was searching through. That had been the news that had awaited her when she had awoken, that the Necromancer had taken all of the dark magic Josie had possessed and intended to raise and control Malivore with it. And to add to that it turned out that Raf had been under the Necromancer's control and that he and Landon had left to visit his father to help him deal with the trauma from that after being freed.

Of course she had no idea that had simply been an elaborate lie by Alaric to keep her from knowing that Landon was currently laying in the basement with a golden arrow in his chest. Given the state that Hope had been in and the ongoing threat of the Necromancer and Malivore he had decided the deception was necessary, at least until Rafael and himself could find some solution.

"Kol and Davina only left a few hours ago. Shouldn't you wait until you hear from them before diving into the research?" Marcel pointed out, Hope not bothering to look up at him. The purge spell Freya had used to restore their memories of Hope had done a lot more than just that, returning memories of several creatures and people he had completely forgotten. And for Rebekah and Kol that had been even more extreme as they had nearly a thousand years of memories that had been altered. Half the reason they hadn't come to Mystic Falls sooner was because it took them so long to wake up after the spell was used, the time spent unconscious apparently proportional to the amount of memories restored.

All of which meant that Rebekah, Kol, and himself actually remembered the Necromancer, and in Kol's case had actually known quite a bit about him. As soon as Hope had learned of that she had asked Kol to tell her everything he knew, and when he mentioned that he believed that the Necromancer had first appeared in Damascus sometime in the 12th century she had practically ordered him to go and see if he could learn anything more.

"Actually this is all research on Malivore, Kol was able to give me a few ideas to look into." Hope said, gesturing to the mess of books around her. In particular the fact that Malivore had existed before the spell created the golem that now went by that name. The original creators hadn't actually created a new hell dimension, being nowhere near powerful enough to do so, but instead had bound an existing one to a golem of their creation. If she could find a way to severe that connection then she could possibly destroy it without needing to be a fully activated tribrid.

"Then wouldn't it have been even better if they stayed to help?" Marcel pointed out, Hope looking up at him for a moment before letting out a sigh.

"Alright, out with it. What are trying to say?" Hope asked, calling out Marcel to just say what he had come up here to say. She didn't have time to deal with the passive approach.

"Ok, ok. You want it straight?" Marcel asked, walking further into Hope's room. "It's been, what, three years since you've seen Davina and Kol? And yet you found a reason to send them away within hours of waking up. So, why?"

Letting out a deep sigh, Hope set the tome she was reading down, tilting her heads slightly and giving a crooked smile. "Haven't they died enough times already?"

"None of that was because of you," Marcel replied instantly. And it actually wasn't for a change. It was due to the general insanity that followed the Mikaelson's around, but none of that had anything to actually do with Hope.

"I know," Hope replied, actually agreeing with Marcel."And I don't want that to change. They've spent the last decade doing their best to avoid getting caught up in something like this and live a normal life. I will not be the one that drags them back into it."

Marcel couldn't really argue against that. Kol was one thing but he wanted nothing more than for Davina to be safe and happy, and if she was here there was a good chance that wouldn't happen. They would be safer far away from here on what was really a glorified vacation. "Ok, I'll give you that. You won't find it so easy to get rid of Rebekah and me though."

"What do you mean?" Hope asked, looking up at Marcel with a questioning look. She knew that Freya would need to go back to New Orleans to be with Keelin and Nik before too long, and had assumed that Rebekah and Marcel would get back to their own lives as well.

"Rebekah found the kindergarten, I don't think you and me together could drag her away." Marcel said, a fond smile on his face. He knew his wife wanted kids of her own more than anything, but that wouldn't be happening anytime soon. But a school full of supernatural children that happened to also need the kind of protection Rebekah could offer? That was a match made in heaven. "And I was talking with Alaric about taking up a teaching position here."

"What?" Hope said, kind of stunned at what she was hearing. Rebekah and Marcel were going to stay? They were going to give up their lives just to stay and babysit her? "I can't let you do that. You have you own lives to lead."

"And we're choosing to lead them here." Marcel replied, finally moving to take a seat beside Hope. Reaching over he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, using his strength to pull her in when she resisted for a moment. "Hope, we're not doing this just for you. Yes, obviously we want to be close by to help with this monster problem and to see our beloved niece more, but those aren't the only reasons. Your aunt had three grubby, snot-nosed kids hanging onto her and somehow looked happier than I'd seen her in years."

Hope laughed a little at that, able to see it pretty easily. Her mom had said before that the happiest she had ever seen Rebekah was when she had been taking care of her as a baby. "And have you seen how understaffed the school is?" Marcel continued, Hope tilting her head as she admitted he had a point. "And I guessing the weekly monster attacks aren't going to help with recruiting new teachers."

"What would you even teach?" Hope asked, coming around to the idea slowly. It would be good to have a few vampires around if nothing else. The majority of the school's teachers were witches, with a couple of werewolves that worked with the lower school. The only vampire had been Caroline and she was never at the school anymore.

"I was thinking of doing a finance and life skills class. You know, what to look for in a lease agreement, type of bank account to open, how to create a resume, how not to piss of the other species. Basic stuff." Marcel replied, having been thinking about it for a while. Maybe two classes, a basic life skills that included the supernatural elements, and a second that was about what the current supernatural world was like.

"You're actually going to do this." Hope said, finally accepting that he was serious.

"Yeah, we really are. We're not letting you deal with all of this on your own anymore." Marcel said, firm conviction in his voice. He was actually pretty pissed that he hadn't known about any of this before, but Hope had kept all of them in the dark. If he had known he and Rebekah would've been here after the first monster had shown up.

Hope didn't really know what to say, or even how she felt. Part of her was thrilled that Rebekah and Marcel would be around more, that she'd have her family here with her. Part of her was almost embarrassed at the idea of having them here at the school, but if the twins could handle having their parents run the school then she would be fine. And another large part of her was terrified that they would be here, that they would be putting themselves in danger because of her.

She knew that was stupid, Rebekah was a thousand years old and had gone against some of the most dangerous supernaturals to ever live and survived and Marcel might actually be the most powerful supernatural alive. But they weren't invincible, especially once magic and monsters became involved. Hell she had once been beaten Marcel, back when he had tried to stop her from taking the Hollow's magic back, so she knew it was possible. There was a real chance that they would face monsters capable of killing them because of her.

"Promise me that you won't be reckless. I can't have the two of you die for me as well." Hope said finally, almost ashamed of making such a request. But she had to make it, she couldn't lose anyone else she loved.

"I promise. No recklessness." Marcel said, agreeing to Hope's request rather easily. He knew what she was worried about and had no intention of going of half-cocked like Klaus had done so many times.

"Then thank you, for staying." Hope said, finally leaning into the hug Marcel had wrapped her up in. It was nice, to know that some of her family would be staying here, even if the idea still terrified her. But it wasn't like she hadn't had people she loved here that needing protecting before, this just meant the number had gone up a little.

* * *

"I was wondering when you would come by." Freya said, looking over to the doorway to see Hope standing there, having knocked to let her know she was there.

"I wasn't actually sure if I would, but Marcel said I needed to quit hiding in my room." Hope replied, walking slowly into the guest room and looking around. There wasn't much to see, just a few grimoires and notebooks on the desk and a suitcase full of clothes near the bed. "Speaking of, he said that he and Rebekah are planning on staying. I take it you're not?"

Following Hope's gaze Freya saw the suitcase she had still yet to unpack. "That," Freya said, pointing at the suitcase, "is because I haven't bothered to unpack yet. I'm staying for as long as you need me." Last time she'd been here she'd barely been able to stay a week before needing to return home, the trip having been very spur of the moment and having needed to restore the rest of their family's memories.

Hope just smiled at that, walking over to the desk and looking at what Freya had been working on. Of the grimoires on the desk there was only one she recognized, Freya's own personal grimoire, although she vaguely knew that the other two were part of the collection her family had acquired over the centuries. Flipping through the notebook, she saw what Freya had been working on when she had walked in, "You're looking into the _Chambre de Chais_ I was in?"

"Yes, I wanted to know why it acted how it did. To see if there was a mistake." Freya said, flipping to a page in the book that had the arrays they had used for the spell. A _Chambre de Chais_ was a surprisingly complicated spell, one usually created over days by a team of witches. She had thought that maybe in their rush that they had made a mistake.

"Was there?" Hope said, having been wondering the same thing. She trusted her aunts with her life but she'd much rather believe they'd made a mistake with their spell than that she'd willing tortured herself.

Freya hesitated for a moment, drawing in a deep breath before letting it out, "No. The spell worked exactly as designed."

Hope winced at that, having been dreading that answer. Sighing she let herself fall back onto the nearby bed, laying on top of it as she moped. "I must really be a masochist to torture myself like that then. God, Lizzie's going to love this."

"Well, while I won't ask for details on yours and, Lizzie was it?" Freya started, a teasing lilt to her voice that made Hope look at her in suspicion. "Right, on yours and Lizzie's sex life, I don't think that was reason."

Hope turned red at that sitting up sharply at that, "That wasn't what I meant! Lizzie is just... wait, what do you mean that wasn't the reason?" It had taken her a minute to register the important part of what Freya had said, too distracted by the other implications.

Freya stood up from the desk, moving to take a seat on the bed beside Hope and handing her the notebook with the arrays in it. "Take a look for yourself. A _Chambre de Chais_ designed to draw your subconscious into it and create itself from that. Only instead of the normal locks you'd place it was made to be flexible, so that you could create an exit and leave yourself."

"But it didn't. Instead I forced myself to go through my own personal hell before I could leave." Well until she had snapped and decided to hell with the rules and simply torn the _Chambre de Chais_ apart. Going by the spell design she was looking at though she shouldn't have needed to do anything so extreme, it should've been possible to create an exit and just walk out. No extra drama needed.

"Yes you did. But you also did something else." Freya said, Hope looking over at her curiously. Between the twins own accounts and a little help from a vampire mind-read courtesy of Marcel, she had a good picture of what exactly Hope had gone through inside the spell. And that plus the knowledge of how it should have worked had given her an idea as to what had happened. "You showed those girls who were with you the parts of yourself that you had kept locked away."

"You can't be serious? You think I put myself through that just to show Josie and Lizzie my past?" Hope asked, shaking her head in disbelief. She didn't believe it could be that simple, if simple was even the right way to describe it.

"Not intentionally, but I think subconsciously you wanted to. And the _Chambre de Chais_ acted on that." Freya answered, understanding Hope's skepticism. If it had been her in Hope's place she would've had a hard time believing it as well. "Davina and myself were monitoring the spell the entire time, we could tell when something changed. The changes didn't start until you first spoke with the girls, and then each one after that occurred not while in one of those rooms, or turning a key to open the door, but during the conversations you had with them. The more they showed they were willing to accept you, the more you opened up and showed them."

"I did a lot more than open up, Aunt Freya. I was torturing myself. God, I relived my mom dying, only this time I was the one that directly killed her." Hope replied morosely, a heavy frown on her face. Freya's version of what had happened had some merit, and was likely true to an extent. But it was pretty clear to her that she had wanted to make it as difficult as possible for herself as well.

"Magic doesn't have to be just one thing, especially when it starts interacting with the subconscious." Freya pointed out, Hope tilting her head slightly to concede her point. "Yes, maybe you made things so difficult to punish yourself, because you still hold yourself responsible for what happened to Hayley. But I also believe that you wanted to let those girls in, to let them see who you really are. It doesn't have to be just one or the other, it can be a mix of both."

"You seem to really want to believe that." Hope said, a little surprised at how adamant Freya was in this. She knew that her aunt had met Josie before, and had been impressed by her, but it wasn't like she really knew that much about her. And all she knew of Lizzie was the stories Hope had told her, which while truthful, were also pretty terrible.

"They impressed me. Everyone was willing to go into your mind to try and lead you out, but Josie was the one that insisted it be her. And Lizzie insisted on going with her, to, how did she put it? 'Cut through your bullshit and wake your ass up.'" Freya said, smiling as she remembered the girls insisting they be the ones to help Hope. The girls definitely cared for Hope, to a level she hadn't expected given the stories Hope had told her of them. "Oh, and she said something about wanting to make sure there was no more 'fairy-tale role play' as well. Any idea what she meant?"

"Lizzie," Hope groaned, falling back onto the bed at Freya's taunt. Of course Lizzie just had to be Lizzie around her family. It hadn't been her fault that Josie's subconscious was fairy-tale themed. Or that Josie had been all to willing to embrace all the tropes that came with it.

"I like her, both of them really. You should bring them to the compound for Christmas this year." Freya said, smiling down at Hope as she seemed to be in a better mood. The last time she was here they hadn't gotten too much time to talk about stuff like this, as Hope had been focused on filling her in on Malivore.

"The Saltzman twins visiting the Mikaelsons for Christmas. Dad would never believe it." Hope said, laughing a little at the idea. Well she supposed they were Caroline's daughters as well, and her Dad had a much different opinion of her than he did of Alaric.

"I think Klaus would have been fine with anyone that was willing to go to such lengths for you." Freya said, a fond smile on her face.

"Oh please, he might have gotten along with Josie but he and Lizzie would've been fighting with each other immediately." Hope said, easily able to picture it. Dad would've said something mean to try and test them, Lizzie would have snapped back like she always did, and things would have escalated from there.

"Hayley would have loved her though. She always liked when someone could shake up our family." Freya added, laying back on the bed next to Hope. They hadn't talked like this since Hayley had died. Hope never spoke of her parents anymore, and definitely not in such a lighthearted manner.

"I'm not so sure about that, Lizzie takes some getting used to." Hope said, not as certain as Freya about that one. It was hard to say, it was her Mom but Freya had known a side to her that Hope had never really seen.

"You seem to have gotten used to her," Freya pointed out, poking Hope in the side to add to her point. "What were they before, the queens of mean?"

"Oh god, don't remind me." Hope said, laughing at the reminder of their former tenuous relationship. Lizzie had been the worst of the two but even Josie had her sharp points, as their interactions when Josie had forgotten her had reminded her. "They used to be so mean, and well I didn't exactly give them a reason not to be."

"They were kids, maybe one of them had a crush on you and didn't know how to show it." Freya teased, getting a snort of laughter out of Hope.

"Oh Josie actually did. Set my room on fire because of it." Hope replied, Freya turning and looking at her in surprise. Whatever, it had been years ago, she had gotten over the arson by now. "I think Lizzie just has a sister complex though."

"Wait. She set your room on fire?" Freya asked, needing some more details on that one.

"Yeah, apparently she slipped a confession under my door and then panicked. And instead of using magic to just pull the note back she set it on fire." Because Josie was probably a pyromaniac. Seriously the girl used fire spells so often that Hope had been legitimately stunned when her alter ego had used a lightning spell during their fight. Had probably been the surest sign that Josie wasn't actually in control.

"And I thought I handled my crush on Keelin badly." Freya said, honestly a little relieved that someone had a done a worse job than she had. Granted in her case it had mostly just been a strong case of denial for falling for the girl she had kidnapped.

"Given that you're married I think you did alright," Hope said, before thinking about it. "Eventually."

"Hey," Freya protested, prodding Hope again at her teasing. "I don't see you doing any better."

"I have a boyfriend." Hope pointed out, Freya arching an eyebrow at her in surprise. Which was fair she guessed since Landon had apparently disappeared yet again. He had a habit of doing that. And it felt like longer than it was since she had seen him, as things had been so chaotic. The last time they had really spent anytime together had been the night after she had chosen to save the Saltzmans instead of him. Ever since she had been focused on Josie and Lizzie, with the only time she had even talked to him being so that she could bind Lizzie's life to his.

"Really?" Freya said, doubt evident in her voice. Hope hadn't mentioned him before when she'd been in Mystic Falls, and she found it a little odd that he wouldn't have been there trying to find someway to wake her up. Of course she didn't know that he was currently sort of dead and hidden away in the basement.

Settling in beside Hope she turned a little on her side so that she could face her. "Well tell me about him then, and more about those girls as well. And any other friends you left out. I want to hear all of it." Freya said, encouraging Hope to open up. It was a small thing but even the conversation they'd had so far was more than Hope had done in years. It was progress, no matter how small it might seem.

* * *

No. No, no, no. She could not be seeing what she thought she was seeing. "What's going on here?" Hope asked cautiously, approaching the coach in the common area slowly.

"Hope!" Rebekah said, excited to see that her niece had finally quit hiding in her room. "Lizzie here was just telling me some stories about you. Why didn't you mention that you had won Miss Mystic Falls?"

"Because there were a hundred things more important going on?" Hope countered with, a sense of dread settling in the bottom of her stomach. Rebekah and Lizzie. Together. Talking about her. She was fairly sure she'd had nightmares that started like that.

"It was your first pageant. What could have been more important?" Rebekah said, glaring at Hope slightly. "You should have told me, I would have been here in an instant to support you. Well there's always this year's I guess."

"What? No, no way. I'm not doing that again." Hope said, gaping like a fish for a moment before pulling herself together. She'd rather throw herself back into Malivore than go through that again.

"You kind of have to. The previous winner is always supposed to be there, unless they graduated." Lizzie replied, smirking at Hope's obvious discomfort. "Or been gristly murdered I suppose."

"Oh there is a way out then. Thanks, I'll take that." Hope said immediately, getting Lizzie to roll her eyes. "Besides I went into Malivore remember? No one in town remembers that I won."

"Nice try Mikaelson. But Josie's little purge spell was large enough to cover the whole town, it's why the backlash was so strong. So no convenient way to weasel your way out of it." Lizzie countered, shooting down Hope's excuses. Her Dad had figured that out a few weeks ago, when the Mayor had come around asking why he'd suddenly been knocked out. For those that had only met Hope once or twice the effects had been minor, only a second or two of unconsciousness as opposed to being knocked out fully. She doubted any of the humans had even noticed anything different.

"Why do you even want me to compete? Don't you want to win?" Hope asked, not sure why Lizzie seemed to want her to participate.

"Duh, but do you really think I can't beat you?" Lizzie said, fixing Hope with an 'are you serious?' look. The whole reason Hope had won in the first place had been because Lizzie had been helping her. How else did she think she was able to recover from the disaster that dancing with the hobbit had been?

Hope had to admit that Lizzie had a fair point, she would definitely lose to Lizzie, especially as she didn't intend to try. Maybe she'd just show up in her jeans and boots, her mom would've probably liked that. Before she could try to come up with an answer though a sudden flash of motion caught her attention, Hope looking over to see Marcel vamping next to them.

"Ready to go finally?" Rebekah said, smirking over at her husband.

"Oh sure, the one time it's me we have to wait on." Marcel said, offering a hand to Rebekah to help her up off the couch.

"You said ten minutes. It's been half an hour." Rebekah pointed out, Marcel shrugging to concede her point. It wasn't his fault that his meeting with Alaric had ran long, there had been a lot to go over.

"Where are you going at this hour?" Hope asked, glancing outside to see that it was dark. She wasn't sure exactly what time it was but it was definitely late.

"Dinner," Rebekah answer said simply. "The school's offerings aren't really enough for either of us."

"Ah," Hope said, understanding what she meant. "Well don't kill anyone. And keep an eye out for monsters."

"Will do." Marcel replied, laughing slightly before pausing. "You serious about the monsters?"

"It's been over a week since the last one showed up. So yeah, probably." Lizzie chimed in, having needed to think about it. The last monster to climb out of Malivore had been her insane uncle, not that she had ever actually met him. Since then it had been rather quiet.

"Well if we see any we'll take care of it." Rebekah said, Hope starting to protest before Rebekah cut her off. "Hope, sweetie, I had about a thousand years of memories restored. I've probably already seen, met and killed any monster we could run into."

Hope stopped before saying anything at that, she hadn't really thought about like that. Of course Rebekah, as well as Kol and Freya, would recognize most of the monsters now. They had been around since before Malivore was even created. "Still, if you run into a dragon or something call me."

"A dragon huh? Always wanted to try fighting one of those." Marcel said, a smirk on his face.

"Trust me, it's not fun. Finn got ripped in half by one not long after we returned to Europe. Blasted thing fought us until it realized we couldn't die, then just set the lot of us on fire and flew off." Rebekah said, not thinking anything of it until she realized the stares she was getting. "Like I said, a thousand years of memories returned."

"Okay you're going to have to tell me more about that later." Hope said, wanting to get as much information as she could. The more she heard about dragons the more she felt that they had gotten lucky with the one they had fought. It had been pure chance she had brought the most powerful death spell she access to with her, as she had suspected Landon was supernatural but didn't know what kind. Turned out that a spell that bypassed magical defenses and liquefied the target's insides was effective on dragons as well, although it did have one hell of backlash.

"I will, but later. We've got dinner to get to." Rebekah said, pulling Marcel towards the door. Fortunately she still knew the best spots around here to get an unsuspecting human, and there should be much less vervain floating around.

"They're going to go eat someone, aren't they?" Lizzie said, looking at the door Marcel and Rebekah had just disappeared through.

"Probably more than one," Hope admitted, well acquainted with her family's feeding habits. At least they tried not to kill anyone anymore, a change that they admitted had only happened once Hope had been born.

"And my Dad's okay with that?" Lizzie asked, wondering if they had even thought about that. Rebekah had mentioned that her and Marcel would be sticking around so it wasn't like this would be a one-time thing either.

"What exactly do you think your Mom used to do for food?" Hope asked, smiling as she saw realization dawn on Lizzie. There were real reasons they didn't allow the students to use human blood but Caroline had needed the extra strength that human blood provided if she was to run the school. They just had to be careful about it.

"Ok, fair point."Lizzie conceded, not having ever thought about it. Most of the time she forgot that her mother was even a vampire, as she never really showed that side around them. "Have you already eaten?"

"Yes..." Hope answered hesitantly, wondering what Lizzie was after. She'd had dinner with Freya earlier, after spending most of the afternoon doing little more than gossiping with her Aunt.

"Good, then come with me." Lizzie said, hopping of the couch and grabbing Hope's arm to pull her along. Which didn't exactly work as Hope simply planted and feet and refused to be moved.

"Where exactly are you trying to take me?" Hope asked, now wondering what Lizzie was up to even more.

"Ugh, why are you so heavy?" Lizzie whined, getting Hope to just roll her eyes. She wasn't heavy, Lizzie was just weak, especially in comparison to Hope. "We're going to my room so I can get you that list of therapists I promised you."

"Is that really something we need to do now?" Hope asked, not seeing what the rush was.

"Yes, because obviously if we don't then you will avoid it and never actually call any of them." Lizzie pointed out, daring Hope to refute what she was saying. They both knew she was right. "Now move it Mikaelson, before I siphon you and force you too."

Sighing Hope let Lizzie pull her along, not wanting to test and see if the girl would really try spelling her into compliance. It was Lizzie so she very well might. And she had said that she would try to get help, so this was probably the least she could do.

* * *

"Here you go, a list of all the therapists I've used, all aware of the supernatural of course. The highlighted ones are the ones I think were the best." Lizzie said, handing Hope a rather long contact list. Names, emails, phone numbers, location, all of it was there for her.

"Lizzie... half of these are in Europe." Hope pointed out, seeing a flaw with this already. The closest one she could see was in Richmond and that was a good two hour drive away.

"Didn't you start using astral projection at like eight? Distance isn't a problem for you." Lizzie countered, dismissing Hope's argument as nothing. Sure astral projection was a little tricky and took a lot of energy to maintain but it was Hope. She'd be able to do it and still go kick the monster of the week's ass afterwards.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Hope replied, shaking her head slightly. Lizzie was technically correct, as she had an annoying habit of being, but she wasn't sure she really wanted to project herself into some therapists office halfway around the world.

"So speaking of therapy and bettering ourselves, how are you actually doing?" Lizzie asked, moving to sit along the edge of her bed and looking up at Hope. The tribrid had a been a mess after leaving the _Chambre de Chais_ but had forcefully pulled herself together and moved on to the next problem. It would be admirable if it wasn't so worrying.

"Better. Or trying to be, I guess." Hope replied, taking a seat opposite Lizzie on the edge of Josie's bed. "Marcel came by earlier and kind of called me out on avoiding everyone. So I'm trying to not do that."

"See, that's progress." Lizzie said, giving Hope a reassuring smile. She would never tell her but she had been worried when Hope had suddenly locked herself in her room. It was good to see her out of it and not actively avoiding everyone.

"Barely," Hope retorted, not being so easy on herself. "I just... after everything tha-"

The sound of the door opening and a sudden influx of laughter caused Hope to cut herself off, turning to see Josie standing in the doorway. Right behind her was the girl from the prison world, Jade if she remembered correctly, both girls seeming rather surprised to find Hope and Lizzie in the room.

"Dammit Josie!" Lizzie snapped, glaring at her sister and the sad excuse for a puppy that was following her around.

"I, umm, I didn't think you'd be here." Josie got out, a little surprised that her sister was even in the room. When she'd talked to Lizzie earlier she had said that she was going to Hope's room to force her to talk to them, not bring her back to their room.

"It's my room too. And what is she doing here?" Lizzie said, glaring at Jade with enough force the vampire took a step back. Granted she had a pretty good idea why Jade was with Josie but needless to say she did not approve. "Giving her a late night tour of our room?"

"I should go." Jade said slowly, glancing between Lizzie and Hope. She hadn't really gotten a chance to talk with either of them yet but she knew a little of them thanks to the school's rumor mill. Getting on either of their bad sides seemed like a bad idea.

"Jade, you don't need to leave just because Lizzie's being a bitch." Josie said, turning to face Jade.

"Yes, she does!" Lizzie shouted, getting Josie to turn and glare at her in frustration.

"It's fine, really." Jade said, pacifying Josie. She wasn't thrilled obviously but she was trying to stay on everyone's good-side for now. Biting her lip slightly she looked up to lock eyes with Josie, "I'll uh, see you tomorrow? At breakfast maybe?"

"Sure," Josie said, giving Jade a smile before the vampire moved to leave, turning back once she was out the doorways view and giving her another smile before vamping down the hallway. A bright smile stretched across her face Josie turned back into the room, the sight of a smirking Hope and glaring Lizzie greeting her.

"You two are cute," Hope teased, the smirk never leaving her face as Josie turned red and Lizzie gawked at her.

"Shut up," Josie said playfully, shutting the door behind her and moving to sit along the edge of her bed next to Hope.

"Don't encourage her." Lizzie said, frowning as she noticed how close Josie and Hope were. Why had she just let Hope climb onto Josie's bed again?

"Wow, you really don't like Jade." Hope said, honestly a little shocked. She remembered Lizzie snapping at Jade when they had done that hilariously flawed 'therapy' session but she had just brushed it off as Lizzie being Lizzie at the time.

"She's never even talked to her." Josie pointed out, giving her sister a glare of her own. "She's actually really nice, and helped save your life."

"Wait, you've never even spoken to her?" Hope asked before Lizzie could say anything. "So it really is just about anyone showing interest in Josie then?"

"No, there's more to it than that." Lizzie said, trying to defend herself despite knowing that there really wasn't. She had a problem, she knew that and was working on it. It just happened to be a lower priority than her mental well-being, emotional state, and the fact that she was going to be dead at twenty-two.

"Really? Have you ever approved of anyone I liked?" Josie asked, deciding to finally call her sister out on it since Hope had brought it up for her.

Lizzie visibly strained to find an answer, as everyone in the room knew that she hadn't, before looking over at Hope. "No, don't even try to say me." Hope said, stopping Lizzie before she could even try to use her to get out this. "How did you put it, 'read my lips, the two of you are never happening,' right?"

"When was that?" Josie asked, looking between Lizzie and Hope as she tried to figure it out. It had to be recent as neither of them had even known about her crush until last year. But when would it have even come up between the two?

"It doesn't matter. And besides we're getting distracted from the bigger issue here, which was that Hope was about to open up before you interrupted." Lizzie said, successfully distracting Josie from questioning her by throwing Hope out as bait.

"Is she telling the truth?" Josie asked, twisting on the bed so that she was facing more toward Hope. She had been worried about the girl ever since they'd returned from the _Chambre de Chais_ and it had only been because of their Dad's insistence that they give her space that she hadn't been knocking down her door to talk with her.

Sighing Hope thought about finding a way to avoid the topic, before deciding to just say what she was going to earlier. She was supposed to actually be trying, right? "I was just say that after everything I put the two of you through that it's nice to see that nothing had changed."

"What do you mean?" Josie asked, not really getting what Hope was saying.

"I just... I always thought that if I you knew what I had really done, what my family had done, that you would look at me different. That you would fear me, the way everyone feared my Dad." Hope said, speaking slowly as she tried to get her thoughts out.

"Is that all?" Lizzie said, rolling her eyes. "We already told you that we aren't afraid of you, weren't you listening?"

Hope gave a slight laugh at that, "It's one thing to say something and another to actually do it." She pointed out, Josie nodding in agreement with her point. Given the circumstances it wouldn't have been surprising for them to have just said what they thought she needed to hear at the time. "It's more than just that though."

Hope paused for a moment, taking a deep breath as she hesitated. Josie moved one hand over, placing it on the bottom of Hope's leg and giving it a reassuring squeeze, encouraging her to continue. "I got my Mom killed. And there's nothing I can do to change that. I hate myself for it, for how stupid and selfish I was, for not being strong enough to save her."

"And I never talk about it, not with anyone. Not Freya, not Emma, not your Dad, not even Landon. I've never let anyone know how much it hurts, or how much I blame myself, or how angry I still get when I remember that day. Because I didn't want to change the way they looked at me. I didn't want to see pity, or concern, or whatever other stupid thing I told myself was a sign of weakness. But the two of you actually saw what happened, saw me breakdown because of it, and nothing changed. You still look at me the same way you did before." Hope said, not actually looking at either of the girls as she finished.

Josie and Lizzie looked over at each other, wondering what they were supposed to say after that. Could they even say anything that wouldn't sound like they were pitying her? "Is it okay if I hug you?" Josie asked finally, not wanting to invade Hope's space.

Hope gave a dry little laugh at that, "I told you, I don't need you treating me any different."

Not needing anymore permission Josie wrapped her arms around Hope, just before Lizzie launched herself at them, practically tackling them onto the bed. "Ow, Lizzie! That was my ribs." Hope whined, having taken a bony elbow to them as she was tackled.

"You're an idiot, you know that?" Lizzie said, moving a little so that she was laying beside Hope instead of on top of her.

"I think you've told me that a few times." Hope said, a slight smile on her face. God something really was wrong with her if she was smiling after being called an idiot.

"Yeah well, it's still true." Lizzie said, not about to let Hope forget it. "You do realize it's possible for people to care about you without it being because of pity or because they think you're weak? God knows you and Josie have done it with me often enough."

"I know, I'm just not very good at accepting it." Hope said, smiling slightly. "But I'm going to try."

"Good," Josie said, moving a little so that she was closer to Hope. "And if when it gets hard or something goes wrong please just talk to us. I can't say that we'll always know what to say or get it right, but we're going to try too. I think all three of us can do better than we have been."

"Speak for yourself, I've been amazing lately." Lizzie said, getting Hope and Josie both to move so they could look at her with suspicion. "What? I've been kind, and selfless, and open with everyone."

"You pretended to be me and gave yourself a eulogy!" Hope pointed out, not willing to let Lizzie continue stroking her own ego. "You made half the school think we were lovers!"

"I can't control the thoughts of the mob, Hope." Lizzie countered, not seeing how that was her problem.

"Marcel and Rebekah are going to be staying here, I can't have crazy rumors like that flying around." Hope pointed out, already dreading when it inevitably made it's way to them.

"What? When did that get decided?" Josie asked, having apparently missed the memo on that. Which might have been an actual memo given that she was still on the student council.

"Probably while you were trying to come up with ways to casually lead Jade to your room." Lizzie chimed in, narrowing her eyes at her sister. Josie could feign innocence all she wanted, they both knew that if her and Hope hadn't already been in here then Lizzie would've been returning to find the door spelled shut.

Hope stayed quiet as the twins started arguing from either side of her, smiling contentedly as they bickered. It really was the same as it had been before. She had shown them the parts of her that had been locked away inside and it hadn't been enough to drive them away. Maybe Freya had been right and that had really had been what she had subconsciously wanted, because she had known that the twins would be able to handle it in a way that she didn't think anyone else could. That they could see the worst of her and still be here right beside her.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** And done. Hope you enjoyed it and if you liked it, which I'm assuming you did since you made it to the end, then check out some of my other Legacies stories. I've got violence, I've got fluff, I've got violence + fluff, I've even got the missing years between The Originals and Legacies... and I really spend too much time writing for this series. Anyways leave a comment and let me know what you thought, those are always my favorite thing to see throughout the day.


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